Breakout Nations Sub title: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles Author: Ruchir Sharma-penguin india
the argument of BREAKOUT NATIONS is that
the astonishingly rapid growth over the last decade of the world's
celebrated emerging markets is coming to an end. The era of easy money
and easy growth is over. China, in particular, will soon slow, but its
place will not necessarily be taken by Brazil, Russia or India, all of
which Ruchir Sharma shows have weaknesses and difficulties often
overlooked in the inflated expectations and emerging markets mania of
the past decade. To identify the economic stars of the future, he says,
we should abandon the habit of simply extrapolating from general global
trends and look at emerging markets individually. The new 'breakout
nations' will probably spring from the margins - even from the shadows.
Sharma identifies which they are most likely to be, and why.
Sharma, head of one of the world's leading emerging market funds, has
spent two decades travelling the globe to find out what is happening on
the ground in developing countries. With this first-hand knowledge, he
takes his readers on a tour of two dozen of the world's most interesting
economies, introducing the critical players and describing and
analysing the forces - many unique to each nation - which will make the
successes and flops of the future. The book is full of surprises: why
the current mania for oil echoes the dotcom mania of 2000; how an
industrial revolution in Asia is redefining what manufacturing can do
for a modern economy; how the coming shakeout in the big emerging
markets could shift the spotlight back to the west, especially American
technology and German manufacturing; why the next two trillion-dollar
economies will be big Moslem democracies . It contains warnings about
command economies (some work, but many fail too), shows that the EU is
producing model economies as well as basket cases, and suggests what we
can learn from the $24 price of cocktails in Rio. Even Vladimir Putin's
dog makes an appearance.