This sucker's going down." That was George Bush's description of the US economy when the financial crisis of 2008 threatened to collapse every bank on Wall Street. International co-operation of a sort never seen
before avoided disaster that winter and by the middle of last year the world's biggest economy seemed to be on the mend. American factories started to work again, shares climbed sharply and growth started again. The
US was showing its traditional strength when faced with difficulty.