Who can blame Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke for hoping that the pattern of 1929-1933 is repeating itself and that the United States can somehow look for a rerun of its grand mid-20th century world hegemony achieved by the economic stimulus policies of the 1930s and the global realignment of World War Two? Barack Obama may have a similar hope.

Alas, it's unrealistic. "Green shoots" may indeed be visible in parts of America's Springtime economy. However, some of the most important buds will probably turn out to be poison ivy. Our recent once-in-a-century mega-implosion of a metastasized financial sector could not be more different than the ostensible precedents of 1929-1933. In some ways, the more apt and worrisome parallels are to three imperial examples - the late-stage financializations and decline-of-empire patterns of early 20th century Britain, maritime Holland (when Manhattan still spoke Dutch) and the 16th century Spain of the gold and silver treasure fleets.

As part of its parallel to these earlier historical misfortunes, the United States of 2009 has now dissipated many of the strengths it enjoyed back in the late 1920s and early 1930s. As the new 2009 edition of Bad Money elaborates, the international vulnerabilities of the United States based on these reversals and transformations will be pitfalls for the next decade or two, limiting U.S. economic prospects. Here's my list of worrisome metamorphoses to ponder:

Back in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the United States was the world's leading creditor nation, thanks to World War One. Now we are the world's biggest debtor.

The financial services sector that crashed from 1929 to 1933 was only 4-8% of 1929's Gross National Product (not that figures exist). A dominant manufacturing sector was still available to lead recovery in the 1930s and 1940s. This time, the finance, insurance and real estate sector that crashed represented a goliath 20% of GDP, while manufacturing, having tumbled to 12% of GDP, is too shriveled to fill the gap.

Public and private debt now represents a much larger figure relative to GDP (roughly 340%) than similar debt did in 1929 (about 180%).

From World War One to the 1950s, the United States was the world's leading oil producer, with no global supply problem. Now we must import two-thirds of our oil with considerable supply vulnerability and at a brutal 2006-2008 cost.

In the late 1920s and 1930s, the U.S. dollar was one of the world's strongest currencies, but because it had yet to become the world's principal reserve currency, it was not yet very vulnerable to a dollar run or crisis. Britain was in that particular currency hotseat at the time. Now the U.S. dollar is the reserve currency, albeit much weakened, with creditor nations like China and Japan having huge reserves. Crises and runs on the dollar are expected.

In the late 1920s, the underlying pre-1929 global pattern in commodity prices was strongly deflationary, which facilitated broader 1929-1932 worldwide deflation. In the 2000s, as the IMF noted in 2008, the world was in its strongest commodity inflation pattern since the 1970s, which may well support rapidly rekindling inflation in late 2009 or 2010.

When world trade contracted sharply from 1930 to 1932, it was coming off a prior U.S. and global regime of protectionism that supported a 1930s U.S. move to liberalization. Now we are in a 2008 and 2009 trade contraction coming of 30-40 years of unprecedented global liberalization (GATT, the WTO et al), which may hint at an economic nationalism in response.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, the U.S. was isolationist, which limited foreign and military global over-reach and its indebtedness corollaries. Now we have very high-cost over-reach and vulnerability centered on Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Over-indebtedness of an empire-in-decline nature in Britain, Holland and Spain was closely linked to hubris and foreign war burdens.

There are other metamorphoses as well, but this short list should make the point. Ben Bernanke may think that his doctoral thesis on how the 1929-33 crash could have been avoided positions him for economic stardom eighty years later. Still, I wonder how much relevance it has - and how he and Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and President Obama intend to deal with our new global vulnerabilities. No one should get too carried away with all the talk about "new green shoots" in the U.S. political economy.

Kevin Phillips' 2008 book Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism has just been released in a new and much-expanded 2009 edition (Penguin).