To say the least, this has been one interesting and turbulent week for the stock market. We saw international markets crash for two days, severe down action, a three-quarter point emergency interest rate cut by the Fed, a $7 billion mistake in France and work on a rebate package in Congress.

It can be a little hard to understand international markets and how they all work. But allow me to use an analogy to explain their interaction.

We all grew up in a family, and one of the most important people in the family is Mom. Mom does a lot of work -- making meals, doing laundry, cleaning the house and even working outside of the house. Families can have very complicated interpersonal dynamics in them. There is a saying that "if Mama ain't happy ... nobody's happy." And I think there is some major truth to it.

But it applies to international markets as well. The U.S. market is the "mama" and the most important player. The $13 trillion U.S. economy is bigger, stronger and more dynamic than each of the other markets, and if it has troubles, other markets have troubles as well.

Now if the U.S. market is the mama, Britain and France are the grandparents (America was founded by British and other European settlers), Germany and Japan are the children (rebuilt by the U.S. after World War II). One could put Australia and Canada as sisters (founded by Britain), South Korea would be another U.S. child, and India, a late British child. Most of the developing nations would fall in as children somewhere, as the U.S. has been sowing seeds of democracy and freedom for many years. Now there are severe limits to this analogy and let's quit before we get too far into it.

The point is that markets react to one anther just like a family. There are fights, there is bickering. Someone is always unhappy with someone else, and most of the time we find a way to get along. The U.S. has the advantage of being the biggest, and that means it can do what it wants to. Remember where an 800 pound gorilla sits? Wherever it wants to.

So with foreign markets seeing that Mama isn't happy, they started selling. It is sort of like kids running for cover because Mama is about to get mad. Even Grandpa and Grandma saw that it was a good time to leave the house; suddenly Grandpa went to work in the garage and Grandma went visiting. As each successive individual had a bad day, their attitude rubbed off on others and they had a bad day. So when one market went down, others followed until you have a small financial meltdown.

U.S. markets were closed on Monday -- I guess Mama decided she needed a day of vacation. And in the meantime, the house went to pieces; everyone was in a panic. It looks like Grandpa (France) almost blew himself up in the garage. We are not totally sure what he was doing, but when the smoke cleared, about $7 billion was missing. Somebody needs to watch him!

And so it goes -- over the course of Monday and Tuesday, international markets saw huge losses. The Japanese Nikkei was down 7%. The German DAX lost 10% over three days. Even smaller markets like the Philippines lost about 5% and China lost about 10%. As each market sold off, it triggered the next one until there was a big mess. As Mom came home, the Fed instituted a huge rate cut and panic played out and subsided.

Kevin Kersten is a Stock and Options Analyst with InvestorsObserver.com. Disclosure note: Mr. Kersten owns and or controls a diversified portfolio of long and short positions that may include holdings in companies he writes about.