Stupenda la chiosa finale… (fonte FT):

"(…) In the final resort, the most significant geopolitical development of the past 10 years took place not on the battlefield but in the financial system. The global banking crisis stemmed from flawed regulation and perverse incentives for banks to sell mortgages to poor Americans with no ability to repay, as well as gigantic leverage in the financial system. These distortions were created, in part, by global imbalances driven by Americans living on cheap credit and Chinese exporters and savers contributing to a vast current account surplus.
Until the Great Crash of 2008, this financial merry-go-round spun regardless. Thanks to cheap labour costs, China exported deflation to the rest of the world. China financed the US current account deficit by recycling its own surplus into US Treasury bonds. Now, three years into the financial crisis, the world economy has been turned upside down. The US is diminished, Europe sidelined, and Asia, for now, in the ascendant.
Consider the broader historical trend. Developing Asia’s share of the global economy in purchasing power parity terms has risen steadily from 8 per cent in 1980 to 24 per cent last year. Taken as a whole, Asian stock markets now account for 31 per cent of global market capitalisation, ahead of Europe at 25 per cent and within a whisker of the US at 32 per cent. Last year, China overtook Germany to become the world’s largest exporter. Chinese banks now rank among the biggest in the world by market capitalisation.
Import numbers are equally revealing: the developing world is becoming a driver of the global economy. From the consumption of cement to eggs, China leads the world; it has also just overtaken US to become the world’s largest market for cars.
China’s voracious appetite for commodities is creating new trade routes, especially with emerging powerhouses such as Brazil. Last year, China surpassed the US as Brazil’s biggest trading partner. Latin America, a region once best known for instability, has emerged through the crisis virtually unscathed. Poverty is falling, the middle classes are expanding and asset markets are bubbling.
Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush’s national security adviser and secretary of state, once described multi-polarity as a theory of rivalry, a necessary evil. In economic terms, multi-polarity spells a new order in which interdependence is the norm and the US, while still overwhelmingly powerful, no longer occupies the role of hegemon.
As for the legacy of 9/11, Gerard Lyons, chief economist of Standard Chartered Bank, says the three most important words in the past decade were not “war on terror” but “made in China”. On present trends, he adds, the three most important words of this decade will be “owned by China”