Trade wars could break out. Overexposed banks might collapse. And that's just for starters

The financial crisis taught us that markets can drop further and faster than anyone expects. Housing prices, for example, fell for three straight years starting in 2006, even though the conventional wisdom right up until the bust began was that prices would not fall even a little bit.

The BLS data miss crucial import-price shifts. When missing info is factored in, the U.S. economy over the past decade looks worse than we thought

That's the annual reported growth of real gross domestic product per full-time worker from 1998 to 2007, according to government figures. "The amount that U.S. workers produce has grown at remarkable rates in recent years,