Its messed up how in the US, the real economy (IE jobs, goods produced, production facilities, wage rates, costs of food, cost of housing, eviction rates, homelessness numbers), is so completely divorced from the “imaginary economy” of the finance sector and the stock market. The WSJ can choose financial metrics and fabricate almost any story they want to, because “success” is never demonstrated not by domestic production, but adjusting the time-span width of plots of the stock market to show booms, or GDP which incorrectly shows value actually produced by global south workers, or labor rates that don’t include those who have dropped out, or who are in the gig economy and without stable employment.

The transition from an industrial economy to one based on finance capital and real estate is pretty much complete. Most countries don’t import much from the US, because it produces nothing of value. The only thing I hear all the older boomers in my home town talk about, the only game left in town, is real estate speculation, not actual production.