In Frank Rich's column today, he writes about how Michael Phelps' 8 medals were a bright spot for a gloomy nation:

This was a rare feel-good moment for a depressed country. But the unsettling subtext of the Olympics has been as resonant for Americans as the Phelps triumph. You couldn’t watch NBC’s weeks of coverage without feeling bombarded by an ascendant China whose superior cache of gold medals and dazzling management of the Games became a proxy for its spectacular commercial and cultural prowess in the new century. Even before the Olympics began, a July CNN poll found that 70 percent of Americans fear China’s economic might — about as many as find America on the wrong track. Americans watching the Olympics could not escape the reality that China in particular and Asia in general will continue to outpace our country in growth while we remain mired in stagnancy and debt (much of it held by China).

An important point to keep in mind is that, even with the current downturn, the U.S. economy is vastly larger than those of the rest of the world's countries. This map, renaming each of the states with a country with an equivalent GDP, gives a great representation- note Russia's GDP is about equal to New Jersey's...