Financial markets around the globe are falling. Here’s what to know about how we got here [Video]

Markets on Wall Street and around the world are in a mini-panic. Worried about a slowing U.S. economy, investors sent the market in Japan to its worst day in decades and have sliced billions in market value off some of the world’s biggest technology companies. They’ve turned a relatively calm year in markets on its head.Video above: Economist discusses what stock market downfall meansFor most of the year, investors worldwide drove stock markets higher, convinced that central banks were successfully, if haltingly, getting inflation under control, and buoyed by a healthy U.S. economy and the promise of artificial intelligence.By June Nvidia, the leader in AI chipmaking, had joined Apple and Microsoft as $3 trillion companies. In mid-July, the S&P 500, Nasdaq composite and Japan’s Nikkei 225 had risen to all-time highs. Investors believed that the high interest rates put in place by the U.S. Federal Reserve were taming inflation without …