GDP

The International Monetary Fund recently published their World Economic Outlook. The IMF has done a great job making their website much more interactive, and they now offer their Data Mapper that maps out their global estimates for a number of economic indicators.

A few months ago, in a piece entitled “Subprime Geopolitics,” we addressed two questions. The first was whether the U.S. economy was heading into recession. The second was whether such a recession would represent anything more than the normal business cycle, or whether it would represent a fundamental, long-term shift in the way the American economy works. We answered that while the economy could reasonably go into recession — and we would not be surprised if it did — in our view, a recession did not seem imminent. As for whether such a recession would represent a fundamental shift in U.S. economic life, we answered, no, this would not be “the big one.”

Does the decline of U.S. geopolitical hegemony make multilateral global governance less likely or more likely? A feature story on the CBS Sunday Morning program yesterday dealt with the shifting world economy and particularly with the rise of economic power in Asia.

Afghanistan has become the world's top producer of opium. According to the United Nations, the Southern Asian nation supplies more than 90 percent of the world market in opiates. And while the drug trade is not new to Afghanistan, it's beginning to leave its mark on society.

A qualitative reordering of power in Asia is challenging strategic stability and reshaping major equations. A new Great Game is under way, centered on building new alliances, ensuring power equilibrium, gaining greater market access and securing a larger share of energy and mineral resources.

Governments must let go of the fatal notion that nationhood requires them to make and control the money used in their territory. National currencies and global markets simply do not mix; together they make a deadly brew of currency crises and geopolitical tension and create ready pretexts for damaging protectionism. In order to globalize safely, countries should abandon monetary nationalism and abolish unwanted currencies, the source of much of today's instability.