LONDON, England - March 11, 2012 - The global liquidity cycle has already rolled over. Assuming that no fresh action is taken, world economic growth will peak within a couple of months and then fade in the second half of the year - with grim implications for Europe’s Latin bloc.

Data collected by Simon Ward at Henderson Global Investors shows that M1 money supply growth in the big G7 economies and leading E7 emerging powers buckled over the winter.

The gauge - known as six-month real narrow money - peaked at 5.1% in November. It dropped to 3.6% in January, and to 2.1% in February.

This is comparable to falls seen in mid-2008 in the months leading up to the Great Recession, and which caught central banks so badly off guard.

“The speed of the drop-off is worrying. This acts with a six month lag time so we can expect global growth to peak in May. There may be a sharp slowdown in the second half,” said Ward.

If so, this may come as a nasty surprise to equity markets betting that Amerika has reached “escape velocity” at long last, that Europe will scrape by with nothing worse than a light recession, and that China is safely rebounding after touching bottom over the winter.

Stocks usually turn about two months before the real economy peaks, but not always.

Stephen Jen from SLJ Macro Partners said the world economy is weaker than it looks, with monetary stimuli losing traction in the West just as China, India, Brazil, et al, hit the buffers, constrained by inflation and their own credit woes.

“The risk here is that the credit cycles in emerging markets mature and start to deflate just as developed markets struggle with their own deleveraging process. We think 2012 will be a tough year for risk assets,” said Jen.