In a survey of hedge fund executives attending the Global Alternative Investment Management conference in Monaco this week, 65% said they feared that the economic crisis will drag on, Reuters reports.

Another 18% said things could even get worse. Only 17% said they thought it was over.

“Bailouts [of banks] have worked somewhat, but problems have been transferred to governments,” said Peter Rigg, an executive with HSBC Private Bank who is one of the pessimists surveyed.

Fifty-nine percent said they think Europe is suffering the worst, while only 35.5% said conditions are the most precarious in the U.S.

“The worst problems are in western economies that have relied on leverage to grow. Economic power is going East,” said Jaime Castan of RMF Investment Management.

But not everyone thinks that Asia is insulated, including Marc Lasry of Avenue Capital, who commented: “There’s a huge fiction out there that Asia is going to be fine, but it needs a strong U.S. and Europe to grow.”

Asked how the crisis could compromise hedge fund strategies, executives said they were most concerned about liquidity, the lack of alpha and risk management. That said, the investment style that most, 28%, are optimistic about are distressed/event driven, followed by global macro (24%), managed futures (17%) and general arbitrage (10%).