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How much has the financial crisis changed the global economy? The answer might be: "less than you think".

You probably think that sounds mad. Surely the crisis has turned the world on its head? And of course it has. But you can turn something on its head - even plunge it into freezing water - but still leave its basic features intact.

Many respected economists think the same is true of the global economy. It's been given a cold bath. But when it dries off we may find it has the same basic flaws as before. (I think that's enough with the analogies.)

That is the fear that will be looming over US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's discussions in China this weekend.

I've banged on about the structural imbalances in the global economy going into this crisis several times before. Martin Wolf has been doing it in the pages of the Financial Times for years.

The basic idea is that it wasn't just any old boom that preceded this bust. It was a particularly lopsided one.

One way of looking at it was that there was a glut of savings in surplus countries like China and Germany, which helped prop up the borrowing of Britain, America and others. Another way would be that an ocean of spending in those borrower countries helped to prop up the excessive export habits of China et al. Either way, it was a co-dependent relationship and a not entirely healthy one.

If you buy some version of this "savings glut" story, then you probably also think the basic imbalance between borrower countries and savers helped fuel the boom, and some of the financial market excesses which came with it.

Why? Because, by keeping interest rates low, all those savings helped to underwrite a massive lending boom and asset price bubble in the West. Investors were eager to turn cheap borrowed money into capital gains - whether in buy-to-let housing, or CDOs.

There was no natural check on all that lending, because the market cost of money remained historically low, even once central banks had started (belatedly) to raise short-term rates.

I'm grossly parodying the argument. But that's the basic idea. The point is we don't really want global growth to be quite so distorted next time around. After all, even without the CDOs and other financial wizardry, we know that imbalanced growth is inherently unstable, because borrower countries can't increase borrowing forever.

Economists at Goldman Sachs - on the optimistic side of the spectrum these days - think we are seeing a rebalancing of the global economy. They think it's too soon to say for sure, but in their latest Global Economics Analyst they say that growth in countries like China appears to be rebalancing the global economy "away from its previous reliance on the US (and British) consumer".

Is that happening? And if so, will it last? It's a subject of much debate.

It's true that current account surpluses and deficits - or net saving and net borrowing - between countries are falling. By that measure, America's net borrowing from the rest of the world has fallen by more than a third from its peak in 2007.

US personal saving is also going up from its record low, with government making up some of the lost demand. Something similar has happened in the UK, though we have less timely ways to track the rise in savings.

You could call that higher private saving and public borrowing a re-balancing. You could also call it a re-cession. In this climate we're clearly not seeing the kind of rise in exports that a true rebalancing would require.

The big problem for the rebalancing optimists, as is that the big surplus countries like China and Germany do not seem to be basing their plans for a recovery on higher domestic spending. By and large, they are simply making up for the loss in foreign demand by cranking up government borrowing - in the hope of returning to the same export-led growth in a couple of years.

Given the choice, I'd go with Martin Wolf. But both sides would agree that the recession makes it hard to read the data either way. They would also probably agree that this issue will have a big impact on the pace and longevity of any global recovery.

Without a change of approach in the surplus countries, the only way that the borrower nations can sustain global demand is through ever higher government borrowing. (Assuming the indebted consumer in those countries has to take a rest.) That's not sustainable, or desirable.

The trouble is that if the excess savers do return to their old habits, the international financial system doesn't have a good way to make them change course, even though an imbalanced. It's the kind of issue the G20 needs to grapple with. Though I don't see them solving it any time soon.