Alan Beattie of the Financial Times had a lovely map up yesterday showing the remarkably unbalanced nature of the global economy. (I’m sorry, but the economic geographer in me feels utterly obligated to link to it…Beattie must have some hot-shot research assistants…or some legit GIS skills of his own…)
It’s interesting, this map inspires within me two competing sentiments:
1) Pessimism: For the prospect that a political solution to the overwhelming nature of the problem can be achieved any time soon; and
2) Optimism: For the inter-connected and integrated nature of the world economy; the fact that each country is utterly dependent on one another for its economic and social welfare suggests to me that some sort of accommodation will, in the end, be impossible to avoid.
If you’ll permit me one ‘deep thought’ this morning, I can’t help but view the type of global integration on display in this map as a recipe for “real world peace” even if it means having an occasional “currency war”. Ok I’m done.
0 Responses to “Mapping Global Imbalances”