Paraphrased, but accurate...

I'm still surprised at how many people cannot distinguish between the American economy and the American stock market.

The American economy is the sum of all the goods and services that are produced in this economy every day. Electronics, vehicles, chickens, cross country shipments. That's the American economy, and it's independently strong or weak from the stock market.

The stock market is something very different. There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. It doesn't have a thing to do with reality or with the American economy.

It does not matter at all whether the stock market drops or rises. It only means that a bunch of heavy speculators are now moving their shareholdings from one place to another. In order to protect their clients' profit interests, they systematically and deliberately damage the American economy.

--Paraphrased from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson