It feels like the summer of 1931. The world’s two biggest financial institutions have had a heart attack. The global currency system is breaking down. The policy doctrines that got us into this mess are bankrupt. No world leader seems able to discern the problem, let alone forge a solution.
The International Monetary Fund has abdicated [...]

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In effect, the BRIC countries collectively took the place of the United States as the locomotive of the global economy, helping to haul the rest of the planet along.
But there is a problem. They may not be able to keep it up, because just as it looked like the world had found a new economic [...]

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A leading global energy monitor fears there may not be enough oil to slake the world’s thirst — and is preparing a landmark forecast that could reverberate through the global economy even as major companies announce fuel-related cutbacks.
The International Energy Agency is studying depletion rates at about 400 oil fields in a first-of-its-kind study of [...]

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Are the BRIC countries an emerging threat?
From the article:
The concept of the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — was coined five years ago in a research paper from the Goldman Sachs investment bank.
This week, reality takes over from theory as the foreign ministers of the BRIC countries hold their first formal meeting [...]

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WHEN Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, was asked to ponder the future of the world before an audience of powerful businessmen and politicians, at a meeting in Switzerland earlier this year, he could have chosen any topic he liked. What he focused on was both a hoary old favourite, and a newly popular preoccupation, of [...]

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In a globalization manifesto, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman declared that the Internet and other planet-spanning technologies were erasing national boundaries. The world, he said in a 2005 best seller, was flat.
No longer. The global economy appears to be entering an epoch in which governments are reasserting their role in the lives of individuals [...]

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The world is on the verge of a water crisis. As the global economy and the world’s population continue to expand, we are becoming a much thirstier planet. It is important to realise just how much water we need to make the various aspects of our economy work.
Every litre of petrol requires up to 2.5litres [...]

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