Inward and Upward!

The US has a penchant for invention, especially when it comes to sports.  Need something to fill up your leisure time?  Let's go throw a ball into a peach basket!  In between wars but feeling the need to crush something?  Let's inflate a pigskin and then crash into each other!  Upset that America doesn't have a game quite as confusing as cricket?  Let's grab a bat and ball and then invent the infield fly rule!  We enjoy the intersection of skill and chance that sporting endeavors provide but at the same time we're oddly inwardly focused.  

Take soccer for instance.  Most of the world is absolutely insane over soccer but we prefer watching cars drive in circles for hours on end.  We don't dislike soccer for being soccer.  We dislike soccer for not being ours.  Nascar and Indy, though?  That's all us.

So it makes sense that as the Euro and world markets fall apart, we tend to focus on the issues that go no further than our shores.  Even the problems of our neighbors, like Mexico's burgeoning civil war, are seen as "their" problems.  Not ours.

Unlike soccer, though, external financial problems do affect us.  Americans don't consume like they did through the 90's and the early 2000's so if manufacturers want to continue selling their goods and hiring employees to make those goods, they need a market.  Europe is a big part of that market but, well, I'll leave it to this guy to explain:

I'm not saying we're all screwed.  I'm not saying we're all going to die.  But I'm also not saying where I buried my gold.

-A