HOUSE OVERSIGHT 021232 E Europe. -5.0 1.0 Italy. -5.1 -0.1 Japan. -6.0 1.7 Germany. -6.2 -0.6 Russia. -6.5 1.5 Mexico. -7.3 3.0 If these projections come true, it means the United States, despite its overspent consumers, wrecked banks, and insolvent auto makers, will be leading the world economy out of recession. Somehow. The developing world will help, but those high growth projections in China and India can be deceiving. China in particular has government policies that practically mandate high growth, and 8.5 percent in 2010 would be just about the bare minimum to keep employment at tolerable levels. And neither China nor India is a major buyer of American-made goods and services; for the most part, its the other way around. With much of the developed world trailing the United States, it will take American consumers to ratchet up demand for the world's products. Scary thought. How to tell when a real recovery begins.? 4 Ways to Tell When a Real Recovery Has Begun You could conclude just about anything from the daily cavalcade of economic statistics. Some suggest an imminent recovery. Others seem to foretell years of gloom. The bent of the expert interpreting the latest news—bull, bear, Obama-basher, Wall Street-hater— has as much to do with the outlook as the numbers themselves. For the foreseeable future, there will be an aggressive hunt for two economic recoveries. One is the technical improvement in economic indicators that signals the economy is growing again. That's the one economists care about, which is why they scour the numbers on retail sales, business inventories, purchasing manager sentiment, subatomic inflation, the mood in Shanghai, and anything else that could help pinpoint the exact inflection point for a turnaround. The other recovery, the one that most consumers are waiting for, is the one in which companies stop firing and start hiring, banks return to normal lending, and families stop worrying about jobs and inc