A lot of economic observers have come to believe the American economy has acquired some sort of immunity to foreign turbulence. Not so, writes PNS editor Franz Schurmann. Adam thought he could live forever in the Garden but the serpent, Eve and God pushed him out into the real world. Schurmann, professor emeritus of history and sociology at UC Berkeley, is author of "American Soul," reflections on America's direction in the world.

Economics is the main concern of most Americans. Being hard-headed on economic matters, they wonder why our seemingly never-ending boom hasn't turned into bust.

But Americans are also dreamers who deep-down believe in "American exceptionalism." So when they keep seeing their needs and especially proliferating wants being met at affordable prices they think that maybe we've been chosen to live in Paradise.

As Genesis 3 tells us, inside the Garden it was wonderful, but outside, the rest of the world was harsh. The serpent, Eve and the Lord worked together to get Adam out into the world. Was it punishment? Or was it a way to get Adam to realize that the Garden is illusion but the world reality?

Even with the current Russian breakdown, many American pundits still crow about the great American economy. We won't be clobbered that much, they say. Holmes W. Jenkins, Jr., writing recently in the Wall Street Journal, thinks he knows why: We're immune to economic chaos.

"Sellers find it easy to raise prices," he says, but the inflation rate stays low. Eighty percent of U.S. employment consists of service jobs. Where tradable goods accounted for 40 percent of the economy in 1950, now they account for only 20 percent. What keeps us smashingly prosperous are services "such as haircuts, restaurant meals, liposuction, entertainment." And "apartment rentals are indifferent to the cost of labor in China."

Jenkins really is saying that Paradise is American. In the 1930's there were signs at park entrances in Shanghai's British Concession reading: "No dogs and Chinese." Parks in misery-ridden Shanghai were a little Paradise, but only for our British cousins.

Jenkins is an old-fashioned isolationist and American exceptionalist. Unfortunately, there are three intakes from the harsh external world which Paradise USA can't do without.

Paradise USA needs a lot of dish-washers, floor sweepers and crop-picker's just about all of whom come from south of the border. A lot of storms have long been swirling in Mexico and, with the Asian and now Russian crises, the miracle economies of Brazil, Argentina and Chile are also beginning to shake.

No matter how small a percentage of total imports, Paradise USA needs mega-tonnages of cheap consumer goods from the huge, low-wage East Asian, especially Chinese industrial, economies. So long as peace reigns there these imports will keep coming in.

Above all mobile and good-time minded Paradise USA needs enormous quantities of oil, which, for reasons God only knows, is found disproportionately in Muslim countries, especially the Middle East. Storms are shaking the Islamic world but in some axial places they're hurricanes.

Way back in the 1950's, Bob Hope used to crow "It never rains in Los Angeles." People from all over the USA crowded into the California paradise. The paradise is still here but can't survive without a huge Latino population, mega-tonnages of cheap Asian goods and ever-rising inflows of Middle Eastern, Caspian and Central Asian fossil fuels.

Right after the Garden story comes what must be the most terrible tale of the Bible: Cain the farmer killing his brother Abel the herdsman. We don't know much about the Cain and Abel sibling relationship. But historians do know that unending and terrible wars between wandering tribes and settled civilizations mark much of human history.

We, Paradise USA, are the model of the settled civilization. We move a lot but, what with affordable in-flight and cellular phones, we never leave Paradise. Maybe Abel was a sort of terrorist whose sheep kept on preying on Cain's crops to the point that the latter saw no choice but to kill him.

According to Genesis, all humans are descended from Noah. We are the world. The storms in Asia, Africa, Russia, Mexico and especially the Middle East are a warning to us who live in a Paradise where it never rains. As Daniel interpreted the "handwriting on the wall" to the Assyrian king: "God has numbered the days of your kingdom."