For the last three years, we've had a two-engine world: the Chinese producer and the American consumer. Both engines are going to slow down. The debate will be whether this two-engine global 747 is in danger of stalling.
Borrowing from physics, the last thing an unstable system needs is a shock. And yet the risks of just such a disturbance have never seemed higher. Far-fetched as it seems, the possibility of a more perilous endgame is rising.