Europe's weight on the U.S. economy

“Europe is important for what happens in the rest of the world economy.” says Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank (NYTimes, 2012). The United States saw a 2.2% economic growth in its financial markets, which is lower than expected but much greater than our counterparts in the Eurozone. The United States and Europe both experienced the grips of the worldwide recession in 2008 and then again saw decreases in their markets at the end of 2011. But, despite these downturns the U.S. has experienced a profitable first quarter in 2012, unlike many European nations. In previous decades this would prove to be destructive to the U.S. economy, as the economies have been rather dependent on each other. However, foreign markets have seen extreme growth which alleviates the dependency between the U.S. and European economies. The dependency has been displaced on other foreign economies and thus the U.S. is not binded by the woes of the European economies. In an earlier post I discussed how the U.S. has increased their production of oil to 55% of our consumption. U.S. energy is being used domestically, and is being traded worldwide displacing our dependency on foreign goods. This is true in other economic industries as well, where the U.S. can seek trades with other nations instead of European nations. This places Europe in a unique situation that they have not experienced in centuries. Their economy is struggling to survive, and dependency on them is much lower as of recent. European nations need to experience a strong reform in their banking systems as well as their governmental spending policies if they expect a change in their economic outlook. Don't get me wrong, the economic downturn in Europe will hurt the U.S. economy, but no where near as significantly has in recent decades.

Ewing, Jack. "US Growth Is Tepid, but It's the Envy of Europe." New York Times. Nytimes.com, 28 Apr. 2012. Web. 28 Apr. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/28/business/global/28iht-econ28.html>.