Can a `decoupled` world cure a sneezing US?

A looming recession in the United States poses a vital question about recent changes in the global economic landscape: has the rest of the world broken its dependency on the US motor?

Put another way, and to use one of the most familiar rhetorical questions in economics, when the US economy sneezes does the world still catch a cold?

Most private sector economists believe the United States is heading inexorably towards a period of contraction, with financial market turmoil and weak data for jobs, housing and consumer spending painting an increasingly bleak picture.

Last week, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson referred to a "sharp" economic downturn, the OECD said the US economy was "essentially going sideways" and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan warned of the worst financial crisis since World War Two.

Amid a hailstorm of such dire forecasts, the fast-growing economies of Asia and the still-dynamic European area represent the best hope of avoiding a severe global slowdown or, in the worst case scenario, a global recession.

The outcome is likely to depend on the extent to which the rest of the world has "decoupled" from the US economy, which makes up about a fifth of world gross domestic product according to 2007 IMF figures.