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For some time now the received wisdom has been that India, Brazil and other South American nations, China etc. will become world leaders.
I think this is wrong. It's never going to happen in our lifetimes. In fact it's more hope over expectation.
As an example India has had a massive power outage affecting over 300 million people. They do not have the political base in order to take a lead position in the world. The same is true of China I suspect. Sure they are doing fabulously well in terms of growth but this is dependent on their exports to the rest of the world which is why their growth is slowing substantially. They have property bubble set to pop any time but who knows when. They are a command economy and this does translate well into becoming leaders on the world stage.
As for the rest of the tiger economies the same is true but really it's all to do with export of natural resources alongside other exports and again this is no guarantee of success when the crash comes, which it will.
Unfortunately, we and the rest of Europe, are stuffed. Truly stuffed. Too much debt and red tape and regulations and trade restrictions help to make us uncompetitive. Combine that with a welfare state culture and increasingly ridiculous environmental legislation this will set us up, in this side of the world, to third world status.
If I were a bank there is no way I'd think of lending in this climate unless the company could prove to me that what they had really was worth lending them money to.
Look at Facebook for example.
All those clever people, economists, talking heads on the financial channels, investment institutions and others reckoned that facebook would deliver the goods.
How wrong they were. Any damned fool could see a crock in the middle of the road, except all the clever people.