Almost two months after Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, uttered the words “green shoots” of recovery in a television interview, debate continues to rage as to whether the world economy is starting to stabilise and will soon turn the corner.

Compared with the start of the year – when the global economy was falling off a cliff in a synchronised contraction of unprecedented rapidity – the situation has improved dramatically. While almost all of the world's leading economies are still shrinking, some at a still very rapid pace, forward-looking economic data point at least to a moderation in the rate of decline and potentially much more.

The outlook in many parts of Europe – including the UK and Germany – and in Japan has not brightened very much, but the outlook in the US and China, the two most plausible engines of global recovery, looks better.