For all those predicting America's economic doom due to its trade and / or budget deficits, read this piece from Foreign Affairs called "The Overstretch Myth".

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050301facomment84201/david-h-levey-stuart-s-brown/the-overstretch-myth.html

Slight digression: This is an economic piece aimed at the general fairly-well informed public. It is about as complex a piece on economics as I can understand. I wouldn't be able to make most of the arguments in this article myself, but I do get the point the authors are trying to make. My experience with economics is ECON 140 in college and twenty years of more or less reading and sort of figuring out the Wall Street Journal and the Economist. Not that great, which is why I don't write about economics much.

One point they make is that people have been predicting America's collapse for a good long time and it hasn't happened yet. I remember reading a whole bunch of dumb stuff as a kid back in the '70s and as an adolescent in the ´80s and as an adult, more or less, in the '90s on how first Vietnam had laid us low and then that the Soviets were going to prevail and then that we were all going to get blown up and then that the Japanese had us beat economically and then that the environment was going to crash and then that we were going to run out of resources and then that we didn't have the national will to fight the Terrorist International and now Bush's fascist repression is going to enslave us all. So far all the predictors of doom have been wrong.

One thing I had problems with for a long time was the relative importance of the amounts of money that are involved in the world's economy. Here's a very non-exhaustive list of what different things' monetary value is.

US business receipts, 1997: $18 trillion (12 zeroes)
US stock market capitalization, 1999: $16.6 trillion
US gross domestic product, 2004: $10.5 trillion
Euro area's gross domestic product, 1999: $6.53 trillion
US services output, 1999: $6 trillion
Japan's gross domestic product, 1999: $4.35 trillion
US industrial output, 1999: $2.16 trillion
US total federal spending, 2002: $2.01 trillion
US total federal receipts, 2002: $1.85 trillion
France's gross domestic product, 1999: $1.4 trillion
US total health care spending, 1999: $1.3 trillion
US total imports, 2000: $1.21 trillion
UK services output, 1999: $1.02 trillion
China's gross domestic product, 1999: $1 trillion
Euro area's total exports, 1999: $808 billion (9 zeroes)
Total US currency in circulation, 2003: $802 billion
US total exports, 2000: $782 billion
US current-account deficit, 2004: $650 billion
Spain's gross domestic product, 1999: $596 billion
US recreational spending, 1999: $534 billion
Spain's stock market capitalization, 1999: $431 billion
Russia's gross domestic product, 1999: $401 billion
UK industrial output, 1999: $343 billion
Brazil's foreign debt, 1999: $244 billion
Netherlands's total exports, 1999: $200 billion
China's total exports, 1999: $195 billion
Turkey's gross domestic product, 1999: $185.7 billion
General Motors's sales, 1999: $176.6 billion
Saudi Arabia's gross domestic product, 1999: $139 billion
Spain's government spending, 2002: $120 billion
Toyota's total sales, 1999: $115.7 billion
Spain's total exports, 1999: $110 billion
Japan's current-account surplus, 1999: $107 billion
Ireland's gross domestic product, 1999: $93.4 billion
Euro area's fuel imports, 1999: $82.8 billion
Volkswagen's total sales, 1999: $80 billion
Philip Morris's total sales, 1999: $61.8 billion
Pakistan's gross domestic product, 1999: $58.2 billion
Saudi Arabia's oil exports, 1997: $52.3 billion
Peru's gross domestic product, 1999: $51.9 billion
Brazil's total imports, 1999: $49.2 billion
Hewlett-Packard's total sales, 1999: $48.3 billion
Citigroup's capital assets, 1999: $47.7 billion
South Korea's exports of electronic goods, 1999: $45.8 billion
Spain's tourist receipts, 1999: $33 billion
Saudi Arabia's total imports, 1999: $30 billion
Nigeria's national debt, 1999: $29.4 billion
US spending on books, 1999: $27 billion
Value of US corn crop, 2000: $18.6 trillion
Deutsche Bank's total capital assets, 1999: $17.4 billion
Boeing's sales to US Defense Dept., 2002: $16.5 billion
Italy's textile imports, 1999: $15.5 billion
Nigeria's oil exports, 1999: $14.5 billion
US spending on recorded music, 2000: $14 billion
BSCH's total capital assets, 1999: $12.5 billion
Spain's energy imports, 1999: $9.7 billion
US foreign aid, 1999: $9.15 billion
Indonesia's oil exports, 1999: $5.4 billion
Total cost of Barcelona's Forum de les Cultures, 2004: $5 billion
UK spending on books, 1999: $4.6 billion