Are markets tied to economies or geopolitical situations ?

This is a comment from a user "vtorch" in seeking alpha site which I am posting here...( http://seekingalpha.com/article/207657/comments )

"It seems that markets and economies often move independently of each other. Citing an example in one of Ken Fisher's books, in China, GDP grew by double digits from 2003 to 2005, but at the same time, the domestic stock market declined and investors lost money during a period of rapid economic expansion. Over the same period, Germany's GDP grew by 0.9%, 2.4% and 1.4% respectively, but the stock market returned 38%, 8% and 28%, respectively. The line becomes even more blurred when we have economists trying to predict market movements, which, in my opinion, really make no sense. It would be interesting to know if there are any counter arguments to the contrary.Also, it is interesting to note that geopolitical events often have very little long term impact on the markets. For example, during the September 11 attacks, the US markets took 19 trading days to recover from its fall. During the aftermath of Katrina (Q4 of 2005), the S&P500 increased by 2.1%. How about a bigger event? In 1918, when the Spanish flu killed between 50 million and 100 million people globally, the S&P500 grew by more than 10%. And in the middle of World War II (1940-44), the S&P returned -8.9%, -9.1%, 21.7%, 23.6% and 19.7%, respectively, for a compounded annualized return of 9.4%. Again, it would be interesting to see if there's any evidence to the contrary. "