The economy in Europe has been recovering, with exports acting as the main driving force, although domestic demand has been weak as evidenced by the decline in retail sales (excluding cars) in December from a year earlier, when sales had fallen sharply due to the effects of the Lehman shock.
In the case of the East Asian economies, the magnitude of the crisis became evident only when the normal economic buffers that are available to absorb shocks were so readily breached under pressure. It has taken the long-standing participants in the international financial community many decades to build sophisticated financial and legal infrastructures that buffer shocks and limit systemic fallout from market disturbances.