“It’s a race against time” whether the global economy ends up in a recession, Gilles Moëc, an economist at Bank of America in London, said. “Japan and Europe had been seen as protected from the U.S. slowdown. Strangely enough, it seems that Europe and Japan are paying the price now.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/business/worldbusiness/14worldecon.html

That's just to say that the theories about the relationship between the real economy and the financial economy, and the linkages of nations in the world economy, are very poor. Of course there will be a world recession! And, actually, it may well last longer than normal, and the US may in fact eventually recover more quickly from it than Europe. What we need is more science-driven analysis, rather than ideology-driven analysis. How can a whole lot of dogmatic bunkum from ideologues provide any real orientation?

Jurriaan