BRASILIA, 10 May 2005 — The government of Brazil will be hosting the first conference to bring together the leaders of Latin America and the Arab world. The “Arab Latin Summit” will take place in Brasilia on May 10 and 11.
On Dec. 27, 2004 “Business Week” published an article “ Four Countries You Must Own.” The article said: “Once in a great while a trend takes hold that’s so powerful, it transforms the entire global economy: The Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, the modern industrial nation in the 19th century, and the emergence of cheap computing and communications in the 20th century.
While commodities are expected to remain strong, many global investors believe rising incomes and growing employment in the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) will make consumer companies golden. In a decade, say the Goldman economists, the BRICs’ middle class will total more than 800 million, greater than the populations of the US, Western Europe, and Japan combined today.
The BRICs’ middle class now number more than 250 million, says Goldman, and those consumers are already spurring demand for cars, cell phones, and better food, furnishings, and clothes.”
On Nov. 6, 2000, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter hosted a “Global Economic Forum” in New York. One of the lectures on that day was called “Is the United States Hogging Global Savings?”
In the presentation they talked about global savings, and they said: “In 1999, the sum of the current accounts for all countries that ran surpluses came to $378 billion. In a sense, this is the pool of money that funds countries that run current account deficits. By that measure, the US used 89 percent of the total world savings.”
The United States government also has been borrowing money from foreign countries to finance its government budget deficit at a rate of $2 billion per day.
Today the US government has over $ 8 trillion of cumulative debt, and the states have another $2 trillion in outstanding debt for a combined total of $10 trillion. On top of that the US government has another estimated $ 70 trillion in unfunded liabilities coming due in the near future.
