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Recession in America? 10 questions assessing the threat.

Concerns about weak economies in Europe have already rattled global financial markets, and things are hardly rosy at home. Is America heading into a recession? Here are answers to 10 questions about that risk.

What's the underlying issue in Europe?

There are several. Europe's problem is not just how to manage a large debt load. The US and Japan share that problem, for example. It's also that the eurozone combines economies at different stages of competitiveness and development. This results in big imbalances, with Germany as an export powerhouse while nations to the south or periphery struggle to cultivate jobs and growth.

Germany has taken on the aura of a fiscally responsible creditor nation, cajoling profligate Italians and Spaniards to mend their ways. But the reality is that Germany, which has reaped huge benefits since the euro currency launched in 1999, has its own job to do: making greater financial contributions to help the eurozone survive.

More broadly, the euro crisis is calling into question whether a currency union among disparate nations can exist without a degree of "fiscal union" – such as the ability to issue bonds backed collectively by member nations.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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