President Obama blames the recent turmoil in financial markets on floods in Japan and Republicans who won’t raise taxes. Republicans blame roiling markets on the president and Democrats who won’t cut spending. The Europeans blame short-sellers. Stock traders blame the problem variously on Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade America’s credit rating, the unsafe condition of French banks, the Federal Reserve Bank’s failure to give the economy a boost, the Fed’s insistence on giving the economy a boost by announcing that near-zero interest rates will be maintained past the presidential elections in November of 2012, and the fact that this week contains a Friday, a day on which traders shun risk lest their weekends be fraught. And if it rains on Monday….

You get the idea. The economic news mucks around in an attempt to explain short-term share price movements, ignoring the longer-term phenomena that will dictate the future course of the American and, because of linkage, European and world economies.