Just as our body has a pulse, so there are rates and flows within the financial world that drive the health of the body politic, the world economy.
Certain rates have long been known to be of transcendent importance for our financial health. You can recognise them by the amount of time I, my colleagues and competitors spend discussing them. The Federal Funds rate sets the price of money in the world; the 10-year Treasury yield sets the “risk-free” baseline for financial transactions across the globe; and the direction of the gold price tells us much about perceived levels of risk, and about confidence in authorities to keep inflation under control.
All of these rates are largely determined in the US, the world’s biggest economy, either by officials there, or by the interaction of officials with the army of US-based investors. European-based investors, in particular, can find US-centricity annoying, but it is unavoidable. When money is fungible, and flows easily between countries, the vital signs of the global economy emanate more from the US than from anywhere else.