David Shapiro: Somehow, world stock markets managed to shrug off worries about the global economy relapsing into recession and were able to stage a comeback, inspired by hopes that a sequence of better manufacturing and consumer data might be pointing to better times ahead.

Less than a fortnight ago, investors were biting their nails after US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke declared that the economic recovery in the US was slowing. Other important central bankers shared his views on faltering growth in their own economies. Share prices plunged on the news, threatening to pierce critical support levels as money managers dumped risky assets for the safety of government-backed securities.

Ironically, waves of money also flowed into higher-yielding emerging market bonds, including South Africa, pushing the rand to even more prickly levels, proving, yet again, that either life in our strike-torn and corrupt nation appears appreciably more appealing from a distance or, as prize-winning authors, Andrew Ross Sorkin and Michael Lewis, verified in their respective books Too Big To Fail and The Big Short, that in general the people in charge of the world's savings are attributed with a lot more intelligence and savvy than is warranted.

The recent bounce in the stock markets has allowed us to breathe a little easier, although the main indices are still some distance from their former peaks. And until the US begins creating enough jobs to reduce the number of its citizens who are currently unemployed, while at the same time ensuring that school-leavers or college graduates are also absorbed into the workforce, the chances of scaling those former heights soon are improbable.

The failure to focus on jobs - on top of other issues like healthcare - could cost President Obama's Democrats control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate when Americans return to the polls in eight weeks' time for important midterm congressional elections.

As renowned Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf pointed out in a recent feature, President Obama unfortunately took charge of America too early in the financial crisis. Although the economic downturn was not his making, his measures to find a solution have proved inadequate rather than ineffective. As Wolf warned, those who were cautious when they should have been bold will pay the price.

His advice has not been overlooked by certain corporations who are taking full advantage of relatively low valuations, investor frailty and an abundance of government-sponsored liquidity to embark on daring and ambitious expansion strategies through mergers and acquisitions.

The "land grab" has not bypassed the JSE. Japanese company NTT's takeover of locally listed technology favourite Didata was recently supported by shareholders, and HSBC - one of the world's largest financial institutions - has announced its intention of acquiring a majority stake in Nedbank.

On the international scene, the pursuit by Dell and Hewlett-Packard of smallish data storage firm 3Par has attracted interest. 3Par provides online data storage facilities to businesses that do not want to buy their own hardware. After a bidding war that lasted nearly three weeks, Hewlett-Packard ended up paying more than double Dell's original offer. Analysts explain that the high price was justified by the time, cost and pain it takes to build a strategic business from scratch.

BHP Billiton's hostile quest for Canada's Potash Corporation, on the other hand, was motivated by the search for a scarce resource. Potash Corporation is a major producer of potash, nitrogen and phosphate, primary nutrients used in the manufacture of fertiliser.

As workers in the fast-growing developing world move from self-sufficiency to middle class, demand for plant and meat products is forecast to climb dramatically, putting pressure on governments to secure food supplies and on farmers to increase land yields.

China is the largest importer of potash in the world and fears of being dependent on a group such as BHP Billiton for such a vital ingredient is likely to trigger a counter-bid from one of the nation's investment vehicles.

While the volatility in stock markets is set to toss our emotions about like the proverbial cork on rough seas for, at best, a few more months, we can at least draw assurances from some of the world's leading corporations that are looking beyond the short term and positioning their operations for a turnaround in the global economy.