The article proposes that a fiscally responsible United States, in which it addresses its budget deficit, would upset the world's economic stability. The U.S. budget deficit may not fill an audience in Europe or Asia with the sort of fear, loathing, and hysteria that other U.S. President George W. Bush initiatives are known to induce, yet it may have the most direct impact on world politics of all Bush's policies in the next four years. Any success the United States has in reining in its mounting budget and trade deficits will have repercussions everywhere. In particular, three of the world's most important economic drivers--Europe, Japan, and China--will be required to adjust their policies in response, and those policy changes will, as always, produce winners and losers in a volatile political mix, with potentially serious implications for all three. A reduction in the U.S. fiscal deficit should help stabilize international capital flows, halt the dollar's slide, and boost exports of economic partners. But, in the here and now, the political costs will be brutal--and not mainly for Americans. If the United States is to halve its fiscal deficit in the next four years, it would remove a sizeable chunk of money from the global economy that has driven global growth these last four years. INSET: Want to Know More?.