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Commodity prices are at a record high. In 1933, the world's population was just over 2 billion people. Today, there are 7 billion mouths to feed - many of them depending on American agriculture.

So Europe's a big driver. And at one point, if the euro hadn't devalued, they would have been making as much money as the US with half the stores. Returns were higher.

Coming from the U.S., you tend to look at one homogeneous market with 350 million people. But in Europe, every country has its own customs and laws.

The American multinational companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalization.

From 1950 to 2000, the U.S. economy grew at an average rate of 3.5 percent. That generated a massive gain in real GDP per person from $16,000 to over $50,000. A huge win for the middle class.

1900 was a bit of mixed bag, it seems to me, on the one hand, because this is the year when this country becomes the premiere producer of manufactured goods. Clearly, a lot of people were making a lot of money, but it's also a time that reflects the savaging of one of the deepest depressions.

Europe is a community of half a billion people, more than Russia and the United States combined.

America is not better off than it was $1.8 trillion dollars ago.

Now, in the space of a year, we've spent 450 percent more for power than we did the year before, and bought essentially the same amount of power. This year, that number's likely to go up. That can't go on forever and have us continue to be the economic engine for America.

We are spending more as a percentage of our entire economy, almost 25 percent, than we have spent at any time since the end of World War II.