Micklethwait then reflected on his optimism from three aspects: first, in the short-term period, the world economy has basically moved back on the right track. The U.S. economy is recovering; whereas in Europe, the European Central Bank and different states tend to work together to buy time for an economic restructuring. Meanwhile, China and the rest of the emerging economies are doing reasonably well. Second, the hope of the emerging middle class around the world, not only in China, but also in India and Brazil, will shape and propel the world economy forward. Third, from the economic history perspective, upon a balance sheet recession or a credit crunch of the scale that Europe and U.S. had been undergoing, a rapid recovery is not foreseeable. People who got pessimistic about the West were actually optimistic about the speed of recovery in the post-recession era. According to Micklethwait, the whole process may take up to 6-7 years: “The reason for optimism, at least for me, is that I don’t think this crunch or this catastrophe which happened to the western financial system, is spectacularly worse than what we have been expected.”