So.. when and not if China implodes I am not sure if that would actually be all that bad for us. The price of oil would follow very quickly into the toilet. This would be really bad for Venezuela, Russia, the OPEC nations and to a much lesser degree is and Norway. Chinese production of slave labor consumer goods would hit a bigger brick wall as the markets figure out what should actually be produced there. So, with cheaper energy here we would see some of that come back here. Heck, assuming things get cleaned up between us and Russia we could see a lot of consumer product manufacturing end up there. In the meantime the writing has been on the wall for a very long time. Back in the early 2000's my 401k was heavily invested in China. Back then my theory was that I would take advantage of their artificially inflated economy and dump the whole mess just before their Olympics. The result was amazing returns, then I exited because like I said the writing was on the wall and hideous failure was an inevitably. It was a nice run, and lots of Chinese generals were able to buy fancy sports cars and condos. But the time to pay the piper is coming and the will probably be staring down the barrel of a revolution when its all done. Hopefully they move towards more freedom after this, along with sane monetary policy.

Precisely.

China's export number was important. They recently reported an 18% drop in exports. That has to mean US retailers are slowing down. The house of cards is wobbling.

I think sting is too mild. China growth and US consumption have been the linchpins of the global economy. Given the $100 trillion in global debt, inextricably interwined throughout the world financial system through securitization and hypothetication, any diminution of either can quickly unravel the whole thing.