Economic trends will provide a very important part of the context in which President Obama's policies play out in the remainder of his term until January 2017. The Middle East's economic recovery from the 2008-2010 global economic crisis has been mixed. While major oil exporting countries have made a solid recovery, most of the oil importing countries continue to struggle, which reflects, in large part, regional political and security issues, the inability of governments to implement difficult policy reforms, and continued slow global growth