As risks to the global economy rises, the historic brisk economy of the US faces an uncertain future, with the crisis now starting to affect bigger nations like Japan's four trillion dollar economy, the Washington Post said.

"Of course, the risk is increasing. In Japan, the stock market crashes, competitive currency depreciation spreads from Asia to round the world and there is suspension of debt payments by every emerging market economy," Rudiger Dornbusch of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said.

Though China is presently well placed as far as foreign exchange reserves are concerned, with a hoard of $140 billion, the crisis in east Asia may worsen if it is forced to devalue, and it would indirectly affect the US, the Postadded.

William Dudley, an economist at Goldman Sachs, a leading investment bank, said the prospect of a global recession can no longer be dismissed as lightly as it could just a few weeks ago.

Until recently, the crisis that started in Thailand last summer and spread to Indonesia and South Korea were striking countries with relatively smaller economies but "Japan has a $ 4 trillion. The Korean economy before the crisis, was about $ 485 billion. So if there was to be a second round of crisis, it would be very likely for it to spread to Latin America and have a bigger effect on the US," Dudley added.

"The more serious developments in Asia are, the greater the impact on exports and greater the possible impact on US financial markets," a senior US administrative official said.

A slowdown in global growth is also in the offing with east Asian countries likely to register negative growth rates in the range of five to 20 per cent and Japan's economy sliding into a recession, chief economist at the instituteof international finance William Cline, an organisation of banks and security firms that invest in emerging markets world over, said.