Economists call them exogenous shocks. Then-Prime Minister Harold Macmillan called them “Events, dear boy, events.” Former U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld called them “unknown unknowns.” Investors care less about the precise label than the fact that the world seems a scary place. Never mind that almost all of the economic news in America is good: corporate profits are up and mortgage rates are down; retailers can be heard humming a happy tune as first quarter profits clock in at 26 percent above last year’s level, and bankers try to stay below the radar but have difficulty concealing their glee at the best quarterly profit performance in two years; home sales and building are up and property developers are snapping up land that has infrastructure in place in anticipation of new construction; inflation is at a 44-year low; and the Chinese are again buying U.S. government IOUs.

Yet all is not for the best in this best of all possible worlds. The happy economic news is accompanied by disturbing news on a variety of fronts. Israel is increasingly nervous at the inability of America and its partners to contain Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and is considering the feasibility of an attack that would delay the regime’s acquisition of the bomb it has promised to use to destroy “the Zionist entity.” South Korea has responded to North Korea’s torpedoing of one its vessels by blocking passage of that regime’s ships through its waters, a decision that might trigger a war with an increasingly bellicose and emboldened North: hostilities would certainly involve the U.S. troops stationed on the border — unless President Obama pulls them out as part of his plan to “engage” the North Koreans. The war on terror goes on, with New York and its financial center certainly among the leading targets, and sheer luck so far preventing a disaster. Worst of all, America now seems so impotent that its former allies, Turkey and Brazil, feel they had better sign up with what Osama bin Laden calls “the strong horse,” which seems to include anti-Americans from Hugo Chávez to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The picture of the leaders of Turkey, Brazil, and Iran holding grasped hands aloft in triumph at a deal aimed at derailing sanctions is, to put it mildly, unsettling.