The behaviour of households has been a stabilising force, keeping consumer demand rising (albeit more slowly than in earlier years), helped by the ability to access some of the very large accumulated wealth in the housing stock. In the short term, prospects for modest growth rest on that continuing until businesses are once again in a position to expand.
Hopes which might have been held that Europe would emerge as an independent source of growth impetus for the global economy have been disappointed. Europe is an economy as big as the US, but in many important respects its structural features seem to leave it much less likely to be a source of dynamism.