THE TELEGRAPH: Merrill Lynch says it has moved "beyond decoupling" to "rebalancing", changing the terminology but leaving the message unchanged: America's headed for its first recession in 16 years but the rest of the world, fingers crossed, will be just fine.
According to Merrill Lynch, the decoupling thesis has already been proved. Global growth outside the US actually accelerated this year from 5.9pc to 6pc, even as the US decelerated from 2.9pc to 2.2pc. America sneezed, but the rest of the world avoided catching a cold.
Rebalancing is more about where the growth will be within individual economies, with Merrill predicting that debt-strained US consumers (and to a lesser extent Britain's too) will rein in spending at the same time as the outlook for domestic demand growth in the rest of the world remains buoyant. That creates a challenge for investors, because it's not simply a case of America bad, rest of the world good. Will the world catch the US economic cold? >>> By Tom Stevenson
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
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