A first surprise was that a shock in one specific segment of the mortgage sector in the United States led to severe adverse effects not only in that country, but also in the euro zone, the United Kingdom and Canada. The impact in the euro zone was a surprise to many observers because increasing financial integration had greatly strengthened the European financial system.
Third, factors that had been exerting downward pressure on the economy, such as the effects of the decline in car sales due to the ending of subsidies for purchasers of environmentally friendly cars and the effects of the recent bilateral relationship between Japan and China, have fallen off or diminished. Under these circumstances, exports appear to stop decreasing.