It’s us against them—an American economy on the upswing vs. a global economy that definitely is not. Last year the U.S. economy added almost 3 million jobs, the largest number in fifteen years. The headline unemployment rate is down to 5.6 percent, and the so-called U-6 unemployment rate, which includes workers involuntarily working short hours and those too discouraged to look for work, although still too high at 11.2 percent, is at its lowest level since 2008.

While we generate tailwinds, the rest of the world seems to specialize in headwinds. The EU is inching closer to a deflationary recession, and the European Central Bank can’t do very much until Angela Merkel gets over her country’s historic fear of inflation. Greece is close to withdrawing from the euro, which in the end might be good for Greece but unsettling for other EU countries. Venezuela is close to default as oil prices remain at levels that make it impossible for the regime to cover the cost of carrying and repaying its debt, and if we learned anything from Lehman Bros. it is that the ripples from a seemingly small financial problem can drown the world economy. Vladimir Putin is willing to have Russia bear the economic pain inflicted by sanctions in order to pursue his goal of creating a New Russia, meanwhile damaging several European exporters with retaliatory import restrictions. Iran remains so determined to become a nuclear power that its supreme leader has urged it to become self-sufficient, with no economic interaction with the West. Japan is having difficulty waking from a decades-long nightmare despite the efforts of Prime Minister Abe. ISIS remains in control of large swathes of Iraq, and Islamic terrorists’ slaughter of French cartoonists makes clear that France’s moribund economy is only one, and perhaps not its most important, problem.