Buckets of oil volunteers carried from an oil slick along the coast of Refugio State Beach are seen in Goleta, California, May 20, 2015. Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

Along with the China slowdown, oil's virtually unceasing slump over the past year and a half is undeniably the biggest story in global markets.

The price of the world's most crucial commodity has fallen to just over $30 a barrel from highs of $114 a barrel in mid-2014, a fall of more than 70% in just over 18 months.

Oil's crash has stoked fears of a global recession in some corners, with notoriously bearish economist Albert Edwards saying in January that things are set to "turn very ugly indeed."

But how would the global economy look right now if we ignored oil? Analysts at Morgan Stanley, led by Andrew Sheets, tried to answer just that question in a note released Monday evening. Titled "A World without Oil," the note looks at how the global economy would be performing if we were to simply ignore the impact of oil.

Basically, the analysts argue that the way oil is driving markets is an overreaction. Here's Morgan Stanley (emphasis ours):

Oil's role in driving hour-by-hour market moves is overstated. But its place in the broader macro debate remains central. Recent market volatility is being driven, in part, by concerns that industrial production, corporate earnings, balance sheet health and inflation are all rolling over. Oil often plays an important role in why they look the way they do.

That "hour-by-hour" market movement being led by oil can be seen clearly in a chart from Morgan Stanley. Asset-class prices across the board are now correlated to the price of oil at some of their highest levels in nearly two years. Here's how that looks (note — the higher the line, the more oil is moving the price of other assets.): In the US, industrial production has been falling at a worrying rate in recent months, which some are using as an indicator of a potential recession. Strip out the energy sector — driven by oil — from the figures, however, and things look a lot more peachy. Here's the chart:

And here's how things would look without oil: The note points out:

Energy companies are no longer leading equity or credit indices higher or lower. In our view, oil and markets are moving together because they are driven by similar things: concerns over growth, a lack of risk appetite, [and] a relentlessly strong trade-weighted dollar.

People across global markets are also concerned about the perceived slowdown of earnings growth in major companies, but that too is being largely driven by the oil slump. Here's Morgan Stanley again:

We commonly hear that corporate earnings are 'rolling over'. It may be more accurate to say that commodity sector earnings are collapsing, while profits for the remainder of the market are still posting moderate growth.

Morgan Stanley's analysts also note that if we ignore the impact of the energy and food sectors on core inflation in the US, Japan, and Europe, the measure actually shows decent growth in recent months, despite real figures being consistently stagnant.

So there we have it. Without oil, or more broadly, the entire commodities sector, the global economy would be looking in significantly better health than it is right now. Clearly, all of this is just playing Devil's Advocate given the fact that we do have oil and that it has a massive impact on global markets. But it's an interesting experiment nonetheless.