The future of the U.S. economic recovery is in the hands of politicians in an assortment of European capitals. If one or more fail to make the expected progress on cutting budgets, restructuring economies or boosting growth, it could drain confidence in a broad and unsettling way. Credit markets worldwide could lock up and throw the global economy back into recession.
Optimists see economies shaking off recession and corporate results improving. But pessimists see a growing debt crisis and a new slump that the world would be powerless to halt