The U.S. may be the strongest economy in the world, but whether it's strong enough to keep the rest of the world from tumbling into metaphorical oblivion remains an open question.
Despite positive signs showing up in statistics gathered by the Federal Reserve Bank, forecasts of continuing economic growth are cloudy, and this lack of certainty is veiled in the sometimes foggy phrasing of the experts.
Time was, Wall Street was called a barometer of the economic health of America. That time, if it ever was, has passed. Even Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, warned of "irrational exuberance" among investors. And fear has at least as strong an influence on investor decisions as exuberance.
This week, stock market indexes have behaved like a yo-yo, falling and rebounding in rapid alternations as reports come in from other major nations as their economies slide and flirt with recession.
So a blizzard of statistics from around the world may well cause an avalanche, taking down and burying all before it, no matter how strong an individual economy may be.
As it stands, a statistical "correction," in Wall Street parlance, has taken the Standard & Poor's index of 500 stocks down 10 percent from its last high mark. And investors are becoming more aware of weaknesses in major economies around the world, including China and among members of the European Union.
President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address to Congress, maintained that the U.S. economy is the strongest in the world, and anyone who claims it's in decline "is peddling fiction."
The American economy may be healthy now, and continues to recover slowly from the Great Recession, but general weakness or even a major collapse at one or more national economies in the world could well take down the U.S. economy as well.
And isolationism won't help. That was tried before, as the Great Depression began its tumble in 1929. No Great Tariff Wall is big enough to stop another worldwide avalanche.
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