You can. but you might not want to.
Actually, I do, however not in the short term!
At the end of the day, which country has the factories to produce more goods and which ones have the consumer debt? Which one has the ability to make more profit? :)
I agree with much of your response. End of leveraging phase...absolutely. I agree that saying the economy grows in the long term with all this borrowing is unrealistic because sooner or later the buck has to stop because many less in America will have it to spend!
In addition, the US owes around 5 trillion to China. That would be easily deleveraged and the problems you speak of be fixed by selling off fixed assets in the USA to China. That shrinks the economy. This doesn't solve the problems within their governing system. It does however, mean that our economy would shrink accordingly to pay off the 5 trillion it owes while it deleverages.
Great final word, an important question!