There's economic good news out there, but the headlines make it clear the world isn't looking to America to lead it out of recession.

The recoveries afoot in Germany, China and even Japan should bode well for a global economy that was pushed to the edge of a serious depression in the last year. Earlier this month, the 16-nation eurozone was lifted out of recession by a strengthening German economy, and China is on the cusp of surpassing growth estimates for 2009. Things are looking up, it seems, everywhere but here.

The U.S. is getting better, but not as fast, breaking a pattern in which it has led the world out of economic downswings. But economists and market watchers are not convinced the global rising tide lifts all boats, including ours. In fact, many are worried that the United States will lag many other recovering economies because it's being flooded with other countries' stimulus, and that in turn could threaten the upturn for the global business cycle, says economist Robert Brusca, founder of Fact and Opinion Research.

"Everyone talks like China is doing something that helps the rest of the world, but China is taking from the rest of the world through domestic stimulus as an export-led economy," Brusca says. "Germany has export-led growth too. Where is the demand that's stimulating all this export-led growth?"

Germany, too has taken the same path, spending more than 66 billion euros, about $100 billion, to push its exports world-wide over the past two years, and promising another $36 billion in tax cuts next year. That sits poorly with Brusca. "Allowing all these countries to run trade surpluses is wrong," he says. "You can't expect the U.S. to cure its trade deficit problems if all these other countries have all this export-led growth."

Sputtering economies rely on government spending, or stimulus, to pull them out of recession. You may have heard a bit about our own measures like the cash for clunkers program or the massive bailout of the financial services industry known as TARP. It hasn't been cheap: various estimates put the annual cost at about $400 billion, about 3% of the country's $14 trillion gross domestic product.

According the Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, the spending has done what it's supposed to do -- halting the slide to financial collapse and putting a floor in the economy to end its free-fall. While Bernanke said Monday that jobs are likely to remain scarce for some time, he also said next year will be better.

"I expect moderate economic growth to continue next year. Final demand shows signs of strengthening, supported by the broad improvement in financial conditions," Bernanke said in a speech to the Economic Club of New York.
Compare this with the recent experience of Japan, which in the 1990s went through a "lost decade," as its revolving political leadership failed to take a firm enough stimulative stance to kick-start its moribund economy. University of Oregon economic professor Joe Stone says Japan went into recession for much the same reason as the recent U.S. slump: "They had a financial system in which banking systems and other financial intermediaries had an excessively high level of bad assets."

Subprime mortgages, anyone?

"But they languished for a decade, because they were sort of half-hearted in their response," he says. "They didn't have the European and American taste for spending borrowed money."

Perhaps influenced by Japan's experience, and with an eye to gaining an edge on the United States, last year the Chinese government unleashed a massive stimulus, committing $586 billion over two years, equivalent to about 16% of China's annual GDP. It's triggered the desired domestic effect -- year-to-date growth coming in at 7.7% through the first three quarters, China is poised to top 8% for the year, something most China watchers thought was impossible a year ago.

"China has one-fifth the GDP of the U.S., and so this stimulus plan is huge," says Steven Fazzari, a professor of economics at Washington University in St. Louis, adding that much of that has gone into stimulating exports. "And the deficit country is the U.S."

In the end, Brusca says, the U.S. will probably have to be more self-reliant in its recovery, which means credit needs to loosen and spending needs to rise, a tricky balance when imported goods are so cheap. In any case, he cautions that we should not rely on any of the leading exporters to lift us into financial health. "That's like asking which of the convicts in the prison yard you should trust the most."