Concerned about European bank deleveraging impacting Emerging Market growth prospects? Worried over Global Trade Volumes dropping and a multi-decade low in the Baltic Dry? Fearsome of record inventories for commodities in China and the potential for a harder landing from credit contraction in the shadow banking system? Concerned that Europe's sovereign and financial insolvency problems are not all gone? Worry no more. It appears, and who are we to argue with the data, that the USA is in fact leading the world out of this global growth slowdown with its Composite PMIs the highest of all the major growth drivers. From Markit Economics, we see that perhaps Goldman's Jim O'Neill will have to change his famous acronym to UBRIC as the decoupling myth (not a lag or inventory cycle) remains firmly in place (and the record-breaking jumps in some of the US Services PMI sub-indices should be treated with all the respect in the world).
Global Composite PMIs - with USA right up there with India...
...which given its weighting is leading the appearance that all is returning to a positive trend.
Source: Markit Economics