A WEAK DOLLAR WILL MAKE MATTERS WORSE: Already, the economic slowdown in the United States and the Fed's interest rate cuts have caused the value of the dollar to drop relative to many floating currencies such as the euro, the yen, and the won. This weaker dollar may stimulate U.S. export competitiveness, because those countries will be able to buy more for less. But, once again, it is bad news for other countries, such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea, who rely heavily on their own exports to the United States. That's because the strengthening of their currencies will increase the price of their goods in American stores, making their exports less competitive.

HOUSING BUBBLES WILL BURST WORLDWIDE: The United States isn't the only country that experienced a housing boom in recent years. Easy money and low, long-term interest rates were plentiful in other countries, too, particularly in Europe. The United States also isn’t the only country that has experienced a housing bust: Britain, Ireland, and Spain lag only slightly behind the United States as the value of their flats and villas trends downward. Countries with smaller but still substantial real estate bubbles include France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Turkey, and the Baltic nations. In Asia, countries including Australia, China, New Zealand, and Singapore have also experienced modest housing bubbles. There's even been a housing boom in parts of India. Inevitably, such bubbles will burst, as a credit crunch and higher interest rates poke holes in them, leading to a domestic economic slowdown for some and outright recession for others.

COMMODITY PRICES WILL FALL: One need only look at the skyrocketing price of oil to see that worldwide demand for commodities has surged in recent years. But those high prices won't last for long. That's because a slowdown of the U.S. and Chinese economies -- the two locomotives of global growth -- will cause a sharp drop in the demand for commodities such as oil, energy, food, and minerals. The ensuing fall in the prices of those commodities will hurt the exports and growth rate of commodity exporters in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Take Chile, for example, the world’s biggest producer of copper, which is widely used for computer chips and electrical wiring. As demand from the United States and China falls, the price of copper, and therefore Chile’s exports of it, will also start to slide.

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