Can Anybody Here Play This Game? The good news about the U.S. economy is that we're in bad shape, but everyone else is worse off.(World View)(International)(Brief Article)

Publication: Newsweek

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The American economy just isn't looking up these days. The growth rate for this quarter will probably be close to zero. Unemployment is rising. The stock market remains sluggish. And now many worry that the growing economic stagnation abroad will affect the United States. It will, but not in the sense most people seem to think. As in 1997-98, when financial turmoil raged across emerging markets, America will benefit from the world's woes. With trouble spots multiplying around the globe, investors are already coming to the conclusion that the safest place to put their money is in the U.S. of A. You see, the American economy is the worst in the world--except for all the others.

How else to explain the gravity-defying feat of the dollar? By all economic logic,...

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