Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of Forbes Media, was none too impressed with last week's Republican presidential debate, because scant attention was paid to how to fix the economy.

GDP growth has run at an annualized rate of only about 2.2 percent since the Great Recession ended in 2009, well below the historical average of 3.2 percent since 1948.

As for the debate, "there was little discussion on by far the biggest issue of all: the economy," Forbes writes on FoxNews.com. The stakes are large, he points out.

"The big question for the GOP is this: which candidates, if any, will vigorously seize the optimistic, pro-growth mantle of Reagan and make it their centerpiece? If none of them do so, the Democrats could well win by default, just as they did in 2012, when Republicans ran a largely substance-free campaign."

Even if the Republican nominee won under those circumstances, he/she wouldn't have a mandate for an ambitious economic plan, Forbes says.

Elsewhere on the economic front, while the world economy almost fell into recession earlier this year, leading indicators and money supply data indicate growth will rise in the months ahead, at least in the United States, Europe and China, says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, international business editor of The (London) Telegraph.

He cites research from Gabriel Stein of Oxford Economics showing that real global M3 money supply growth — based on the United States, China, The European Economic and Monetary Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada — soared to a six-year high of 6.2 percent in June.

"The M3 gauge tends to lead economic growth by 12 months or so, suggesting that the worst may soon be over," Evans-Pritchard writes.

In terms of U.S. monetary policy, while the Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates this year from their record lows, Fed officials have pledged to move cautiously. The central bank's balance sheet stands at $4.5 trillion thanks to massive quantitative easing over the past seven years.

For the world overall, "the chances are that the growth scare of 2015 will prove to be a false alarm," Evans-Pritchard says.

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