I’ve never shared the view of those who oppose globalism, the linking of economies by country or even continents.

But I am puzzled as to precisely why the troubles in Cyprus, an island nation in the eastern Mediterranean, are causing such tumult all over the world.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/19/investing/premarkets/index.html?source=cnn_bin

Cyprus has a Gross Domestic Product – the value of all goods and services produced annually – of about $23 billion. It has a population of about 1.1 million people. Its capital city of Nicosia has a few more residents than Amarillo (population, 191,000). Control of the island is split between governments supported by the ethnic Greeks who comprise the vast majority of the people who live there and the ethnic Turks, who set up a minority government in 1974 when Turkish forces invaded the nation to prevent what they said was a threat to the Turks on the island.

But with a run on the banks in Cyprus and with the world watching what might happen there, investors have gotten fidgety.

It’s because of concerns that might develop in the rest of the European Union, of which Cyprus is a member. Indeed, the EU itself is a product of globalization, as nations all across Europe scrapped their currencies in favor of the euro, which is used as monetary tender throughout the continent, with a few exceptions, such as Great Britain.

The Cypriot economy appears to be heading for trouble, just as it has in Greece, Spain and Italy. The country needs EU bailout money and the banks have been shut down to prevent a mass withdrawal of currency from their vaults.

And all this worry over a country that contributes so very little to the world’s economic health and well-being.

We’d all better get used to this kind of turmoil in smaller countries such as Cyprus. Whenever one of them burps in this age of globalization, it seems as if the whole world gets heartburn.