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As world leaders gather in Washington for the twice annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, many are sensing a shift in U.S. dominated economic power.

The New York Times reported that the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have filled Washington with motorcades and traffic jams and loaded the schedules of President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew. But they have also highlighted what some in Washington and around the world see as a United States government so bitterly divided that it is on the verge of ceding the global economic stage it built at the end of World War II and has largely directed ever since.

“It’s almost handing over legitimacy to the rising powers,” Arvind Subramanian, the chief economic adviser to the government of India, said of the United States in an interview on Friday. “People can’t be too public about these things, but I would argue this is the single most important issue of these spring meetings.”

Since 1945 the United States international strength has come about because of its strong economy, but slowly that is changing.  The United States still has not recovered from the financial crisis of 2008-09; the recovery which began in June 2009 still hasn’t reached most of America. The country has been averaging around 2% growth for the past couple of year, which is barely enough to keep up with population growth into the economy.

Even last month’s unemployment report has continued to show a declining labor participation level unseen since 1978.  Now some of this is due to the fact of those entering retirement, but economist have also noted there is still a high number of people who just dropped out of the economy because they cannot find viable employment.

“The United States has lost its way and is rapidly forfeiting claims to global financial, economic, political and moral leadership,” Kevin Rafferty, a former World Bank official, wrote recently in two leading English-language newspapers in Asia. He blamed the White House: “Not for the first time, Obama has shown he can talk eloquently, but does not have a political clue how to get things done.”

The biggest challenge for the United States is the ability to get its own fiscal house in order.  Currently the U.S. has over $18 trillion debt and growing, and stagnate economy where the top are doing extremely well at the expense of ordinary Americans.

The U.S. is facing competition from China, who is establishing a Asian investment bank that rivals the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other institutions, already have major nations signed up.  European nations have signed on to this new bank led by China.

The New York Times reported that the announcement by Germany, Europe’s largest economy, came only six days after Secretary of State John Kerry asked his German counterpart, Frank Walter-Steinmeier, to resist the Chinese overtures until the Chinese agreed to a number of conditions about transparency and governing of the new entity. But Germany came to the same conclusion that Britain did: China is such a large export and investment market for it that it cannot afford to stay on the sidelines.

American officials have fumed that China never approached the Group of 7 — the consortium of economic powers that the United States has led — but rather decided to pick off individual members, setting a deadline of the end of March for them to decide whether to join the new organization, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which many refer to by its initials, the A.I.I.B.

The U.S. has to understand the changing demographics of the world around us, but unfortunately the Obama administration is late in seeing the threat or chooses not to deal with it.

This is a perfect opportunity for the aspirants to the White House in 2016 to discuss this in greater detail in what there polices in jump starting the sluggish U.S. economy.

The unfortunate aspect we will only get campaign bumper sticker polices by the candidates.