YOU’VE PROBABLY SPENT the past weeks sorting through the hourly fluctuations in share prices and interest rates, expert guesses on what the Federal Reserve Board’s monetary policy committee would do to short-term interest rates, who’s in and who’s out at Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, and other troubled banks and brokerages, the ups and downs–well, mostly downs–of the dollar, and the other stuff of the daily financial press. So just for a change, let’s look at the trends that will be more enduring, and will affect the world’s economies long after the current ups and downs are forgotten.
Perhaps most important is the massive shift in the world’s wealth to the developing economies of Asia and the Middle East. China and India have finally integrated their massive work forces into the globalized economy, and have become export engines–the new workshops of the world. Meanwhile, Russia and the Middle Eastern nations that float on a sea of oil are parlaying $90 per barrel prices into massive accumulations of wealth.
