A summary from Barclays Global Investors was sent out in advance of its “ETF Landscape” report with data that indicates ETF assets are still heading up.

An earlier BGI ETF Landscape report, which came out last week, covered the first half of 2009 through June. The updated data goes through July to give investors an even more current view of market sentiment and relative conditions. (Read related story here.)

Basically, the update confirms that ETF assets are continuing to grow. All told, they were up more than 9% from the end of June, with a total year-to-date increase of 21.2%. Those are some pretty impressive increases. Total world assets in ETFs now stand at $862 billion—higher than they’ve ever been—in 1,768 ETFs.

The U.S. seems to be holding its own. Sure, Europe’s total assets were up 28.2% year-to-date according to the report, while U.S. assets were up 17.2%. However, when you consider that Europe’s ETF market didn’t really get going until seven years or so after the launch of the original SPDR and that the month of July alone saw the launch of 40 ETFs (with more than 120 launched year-to-date), it’s clear that Europe is still in a period of rapid ETF growth.

The U.S. market is more mature and growing at a slowed pace—only eight new ETFs had launched during 2009 by the end of July. Nevertheless, in terms of absolute value, Europe’s assets increased by $40 billion, while the U.S. saw its ETF assets grow by $85 billion.

And it’s kinda fun to futz around with the numbers.

If you subtract U.S. assets ($582 billion) and European assets ($183 billion) from the global total, you end up with $97 billion in assets in 309 ETFs listed on various exchanges around the world, mostly in Canada, Asia and Latin America. That’s up from 262 ETFs and $71 billion at the end of 2008.

Right now, economists are mixed (although more optimistic than even a few months ago) on where the global economy stands. The most negative viewpoints are that we have years before a full recovery. And corporate earnings are still a big question mark heading into the second half of the year.

But ETFs seem to be doing just fine. In fact, they seem to be doing better than fine—thriving even.

So the question I’m asking is, did the disasters of 2008 actually end up helping the ETF industry? (For a complete 10-year study of ETF assets and money flows compared to index mutual funds and active mutual funds, see story here.)