The two-week plunge in stock prices is signaling economic anxiety, but it's also compounding the problem: Lower stock prices are shrinking Americans' wealth, rattling their confidence and making them less inclined to spend. And employers may become even slower to hire.

Wealthy countries all over the world are dealing with debts and strained budgets as they mop up after the Great Recession and brace for the budget-busting retirement of the baby boomer generation. But the United States is in a bigger fix than almost anyone else.

Two years after economists say the Great Recession ended, the recovery has been the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.