I just hear it everywhere. I'm sure the whole world has too much at stake if US Dollar loses its value. The economy might stagflate for a while, but I believe it will eventually recover. After all, USA is the largest economy in the world.
I would hazard a guess that Zimbabwe has massive inflation because of the Mugabe school of economic thought rather than because it is a small economy.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Nominal_G...
Originally the EU was fully called the European Economic Community, the goal was to form a single economy. Whether or not it is a single country is not an issue here, the OP spoke about 'economy', not about 'country'.
No, Europe's not a country, but it behaves like one for trade and currency purposes and has no internal tariffs. Nor can Germany (for example) impose a tariff separately from the EU. So in this context, the EU might as well be a country.
When you sum the GDPs of Euro using countries, you get 12.23 trillion dollars, or slightly less than the USA's GDP (http://www03.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=eurozone+gdp+vs+USA+g...).
How the size of an economy correlates with its resillience remains an entrirely different question IMHO.
Looking at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Supranational_European_Bod... European economic zone is a larger economic group. And the UN is even larger, but hey that's another story.
I think an economy is a region with a 'scope' that depends on the discussion at hand. You could speak about the ecnomy of Colombia in isolation, or you could look at the economy of Latin America as a whole. When comparing you'd compare Latin America as a whole with for instance North America, Europe or Asia.
It is common to compare the US economy vs the EU economy or all of Asia, not to compare the economy of Germany with Texas.
Usually regions that can be lumped together share a border.
To make the comparision more fair I think if you wish to compare 'apples with apples' as much as possible probably the inclusion of the NAFTA region would be more appropriate when comparing with the EU.
That's both sides of the political spectrum endorsing irresponsibility
But you can't live like that. Government != God meaning that misconception can't last forever. Following that logic it means our society learns this lesson now or by some miracle gets by only to have the next generations face a collapse and learn it. Maybe it's time to feel some pain now so our Children and Grandchildren get the message that the Government can't always bail you out.