"Thanks. I have come to recognize a standard editorial formula for such stories: lay out a financial doomsday scenario and then get experts to comment on whether it "could" happen. There are always experts available who will play along, flattered by press attention or thinking publicity useful to their careers.
String together several apocalyptic comments and our prosperity can be made to seem fragile and endangered by adverse changes in most anything: Shanghai port loadings; reserve Saudi oil capacity; LIBOR schedules; Japanese patent filings; drought in the Sahara; and so on.
Uhhh, what about the American economy? What about domestic business conditions, the money supply, and the burdens of taxes, regulation, and politically driven misinvestment and financial bubbles? Dull, dull, dull. A foreign scare makes for better reading does it not?"
Very well put indeed. America is bar none the best financial market to invest in. Period. I don't see that changing in the next 20 years so any other fear-driven speculation is politically motivated.