A sustainable recovery is hard to come by

1. Growth in a couple of European economies can not fill the gap for global demand. A closer look at the data will tell you that most recovery in the manufacturing sector is due to inventory depletion which's highly cyclical and as a result, does not provide support for a sustainable global recovery. Further more, Countries in the East and in the South, notably Spain, whose banks are still facing enormous balance sheet problems due to continuing writedowns in real-estate loans, will be a big drag in years to come.

2. UK central bank's QE appears extremely unsustainable. Quantitative easing floods the economy with abundant liquidity, it provides temporary relief but to the extent the majority of banks are still reluctant to lend, private consumption has not been getting the anticipated boost,this is the opposite of BOE's intent. The bigger question is: How confident are you of any central governement's ability to come up with and execute "exit strategies"? ie. When is appropriate to phase out stimulus and how?

3. The US economy is on a rebound, indeed. But what we have witnessed the last two months, the growth in auto sales, a larger proportion is attributed to the govt's "Cash for Clunkers" program. Car industry is crucial to the US economy,unfortunately it's faced with many challenges: diminishing profit margin due to consumer switching to smaller cars, industry regulation on carbon emissions and the more pressing issue: OVERCAPACITY. It sure didn't help when none of the struggling auto makers have been let die thanks to the unlimited supply of taxpayer's money.

4. China can only do so much to power its economy, as long as global demand has not come back, it's unlikely it will maintain growth over a sustainable period of time. China's efforts to adjust global trade imbalances and its focus on domestic consumption will have an impact, but the impact is likely to be short-lived if the rest of the world can not keep up with it.