The United States of America dominate almost all international markets because their Companies (GM, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Wal-Mart, IBM, GE, Citigroup, McDonald's, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley...) that raise funds and use them as large investments from individuals and institutions from around the world and that generate significant amounts of jobs, grew and spread their roots all through out the world becoming absolute giants. This is the reason why the economy of most countries does well when the American economy does well. And if any of those Companies goes Bankrupt the consequences are naturally devastating for a lot of people (investors, employees...).
During the past two decades, people, specially in USA, Canada, Japan and Europe had this consumption illusion that they could spend, spend and spend, thinking that they actually had any money available, when all the consumption was mostly done by using credit cards and/or loans facilitated by financial institutions.
Obviously that in reality, people never had as much money as they thought, but believed that they'd be able to pay off their debts in a near future or make the minimum payments, forgetting though that jobs are not a permanent or guaranteed thing. This is the reason (among others), why many Americans are losing their homes and other goods.
At the same time, many Companies of all industries were closing their doors (leaving thousands unemployed) and gradually moving part or all the production to countries in East Europe (Russia, Hungary, Poland, Check Republic...etc) and developing countries, particularly China and India (Mexico, Brazil, Vietnam, Bangladesh...) where the production costs are much more attractive. Which means that the salaries are much less, although the workers are as educated and qualified, taxes, benefits and Unions are almost nonexistent and consequently the profits are much larger.
Therefore, the money that used to be in the hands of the financial institutions of the industrialized countries was little by little being transferred to other countries. Today the markets of the industrialized countries are completely inundated (naturally) with goods and products made in China, India, Mexico, Pakistan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Bangladesh and others and the profits of the sales, obviously end up in the safes of the financial institutions of those countries.
So in order to survive, the financial institutions in the USA (Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup...) had to receive over 250 billion dollars from the Federal Government because there was no liquidity for credit, loans, lines of credit that many companies and individuals need for their day-to-day business activities.
The interesting part is that all the money that the American Federal Government provided was borrowed from China because the USA carry a debt load of more thanb 10.6 Trillion (also due to expenses incurred with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). This situation means that each US citizen is currently in debt in more than $37 thousand.
