Prognosticating on economic health is an activity that seems to lose its galloping gait, that or just descend into grizzled old prospector-junkyard-survivalist, when one is on the inside, looking out with some elements and on the outside, looking in with others. Having ones wage denominated in dollars (like commodities such as oil and gold) and working for a grasping tentacle, pseudopod, and living in an European framework, I see a lot of income lost in translation to euro from the weakened dollar.
There is also the sublimation of value from creeping inflation, food and fuel becoming dearer. These are shared realities, the deleveraged US market adverse to German exports and those things not made but managed by Americans and rise in costs that is spurred on by a supply deficit or disincentive to meet demand due to that same eroding dollar, but still hard to trace. Without assigning blame, just cause, this situation is the more difficult to understand, though the perspective gained is valuable, and demands that one be aware of macroeconomics and the diplomacy of money.
The other side of the picture, looking back on America and not its reflection or projection, is seemingly more transparent--though criticism is a cheap currency too. Maybe the assessment and attributions are unfair but the USA, crestfallen, is limning a caricature of itself and beneficent hegemony: lousy with bed-bugs, danger-prone, disparate, profligate, bankrupt, boorish, brutish, and maybe even yet not enough esteemed to pull others in its wake. Gainsaying and guesswork are not so much fun when negotiating between these separate gauges of wellbeing.
