Henry Paulson, the US treasury secretary, referred to a "sharp" economic downturn [AFP]

Recession is looming or has it arrived?

To use a common rhetorical question in economics - when the US economy sneezes does the world still catch a cold or has the rest of the world broken its dependency on the US motor?

A looming recession in the United States poses a vital question about recent changes in the global economic landscape.

Last week, Henry Paulson, the US treasury secretary, referred to a "sharp" economic downturn, the OECD said the US economy was "essentially going sideways" and Alan Greenspan, the former federal reserve chairman, warned of the worst financial crisis since World War Two.

On the next Riz Khan show we take an in-depth look at the state of the US economy and the impact it is having on global economies.

Our guests are Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycles Research Institute in New York, Ha-Joon Chang, the author of Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, and James Galbraith, an author and progressive economist.