Global Viewn Our Global Economics team recently issued a major report entitled “Global slowdown, local strength: Sources of demand in 2007” (September 13). The report examines how economies around the world are likely to fare as U.S. growth decelerates and what the investment implications of the slowdown are likely to be for equities, global fixed income and foreign-exchange markets, and commodities. We outline some of the highlights in the paragraphs below.n The U.S. has been a key engine of global economic growth for nearly a decade. Now, the world economy can no longer rely on the U.S. consumer as a buyer of last resort, in our view. We expect a significant slowdown in U.S. growth, one that is likely to occur sooner and be more persistent than most observers currently think it will be. As we see it, U.S. GDP growth is likely to fall from 3.4% this year to
