You don't need Malcolm Gladwell or those Freakonomics guys to tell you that Americans love to have their economy lessons consumed in small, bite-sized pop culture nuggets. So when your country's finances are failing and you have to drink a iced triple shot, no foam, extra tall, sea-salt caramel macchiato just to get out of bed and into another horrific day at the office, you have to ask yourself: Is there any sort of cutesy, over-simplified analogy that someone could sell me on to explain why my retirement fund has disappeared overnight?

And if you are Daniel Gross, you look down into your iced over sweetened Starbucks beverage and say, "Bingo:"

Having a significant Starbucks presence is a pretty significant indicator of the degree of connectedness to the form of highly caffeinated, free-spending capitalism that got us into this mess. It's also a sign of a culture's willingness to abandon traditional norms and ways of doing business (virtually all the countries in which Starbucks has established beachheads have their own venerable coffee-house traditions) in favor of fast-moving American ones. The fact that the company or its local licensee felt there was room for dozens of outlets where consumers would pony up lots of euros, liras, and rials for expensive drinks is also a pretty good indicator that excessive financial optimism had entered the bloodstream.

While the point Gross makes is a fair one — rampant capitalism is most apparent in the appearance of Starbucks, and also what got us into this mess ‐ the examples he gives of countries that prove the opposite (don't have too many Starbucks, don't have their banks currently failing because of the global economy crisis) are for the most part second and third world countries.

Sure, the banks in Columbia might be as strong as ever, and you still have to buy coffee in a cafe, but that's because their main export is still cocaine.

Maybe what Gross was getting is getting at is that global trade got us into this mess? In which case, fine, let's put tons of embargoes on our shitty iced coffee.