The story could have been very different had the US and Europe not been growing strongly at the time. In 2001 it was the locomotive itself that had stalled, resulting in a generalised world downturn. The nature of this downturn has implications for the future prospects for the world economy.
Few analyses of the current downturn fail to mention the increased synchronicity of economic cycles across regions. In April 2001 the UNCTAD Trade and Development Report had argued that without a coordinated global policy response, the slowdown in the United States would produce a synchronous cyclical downturn in the world economy.