Now that we've looked at China and Europe, it’s time to examine Japan’s economic future.

Today, we’ll continue the “outside view” series on international investing with a look at the eurozone.

Ever since Christmas, the stock market has been trending downward, with the slide getting worse over the past week or so.

As I’ve mentioned multiple times, I generally don’t start to pay attention until we hit the 200-day moving average (which is now at around 1,966 for the S&P 500). But a couple of things have caught my notice lately.

Let’s take the factors we discussed yesterday and apply them to the countries that matter, starting with China.

The largest economy outside the U.S., China is approaching several challenges, the most urgent of which is the need to shift economic growth away from infrastructure and investment and toward consumption. Let’s examine the data and see what an outside view suggests for investors.

Now that we’ve determined which countries are globally relevant, from an economic point of view, we need to decide which factors really matter in how those countries will fare over the next five years.

Building on yesterday’s post, today we’ll start to look at what a global perspective means in an investment context. Of course, I know perfectly well that all countries matter; what I’m getting at in the headline is “Which countries are economically significant on a global scale?”

This week, I'm at Commonwealth’s Chairman’s Retreat in Miami, a place that quickly reminds you that the world is much bigger than the U.S. As it happens, my talk here will focus on the rest of the world—and how, exactly, the U.S. fits into it.

The December jobs report came in this morning, with very good results overall.

• The total number of jobs was up by 252,000, beating expectations of 240,000.
• This continues the streak of months with 200,000-plus jobs created, the longest since the mid-1990s.

I wrote yesterday that lower interest rates and oil prices shouldn’t be a major problem here in the U.S. But the rates, at least, could be symptomatic of real problems in Europe and Japan.

With the recent report that consumer price inflation dropped below 0 percent for the eurozone, it’s worth taking a closer look at what Europe is facing, and what lower interest rates there mean.

I’m a big believer in the lessons of history and, as regular readers know, always deeply skeptical of claims that “things are different this time.” So I can appreciate the arguments we’re hearing today that falling oil prices and interest rates signal trouble ahead.

I'm just not sure the U.S. is in a position to worry.