RIP Mr. Market

"Fears that the United States may be in a recession reverberated around the world on Monday, sending stock markets from Mumbai to Frankfurt into a tailspin and puncturing the hopes of many investors that Europe and Asia would be able to sidestep an American downturn."

"Until now, overseas markets had largely avoided the sell-off that has caused steep declines recently in the United States, whose markets were closed in observance of Martin Luther King’s Birthday. But investors reacted with what many analysts described as panic to the multiplying signs of weakness in the American economy.

And in a sign that the United States could join the sell-off on Tuesday, trading in stock index futures pointed to a substantial decline when markets reopen on Wall Street.

The angst about the United States belies the popular theory that Europe and Asia are not as dependent on the American economy as they once were, in part because they trade more with each other. The theory, known as decoupling, has been used to explain why economies like China and Germany have kept growing robustly, even as the United States has slowed."