ABSTRACT
Next time you get the chance, open up Google and type in ‘Goldman Sachs Global Economic Paper No: 99’. Economics may be the ‘dismal science’ as Thomas Carlyle called it, but don’t let this paper’s unassuming title fool you. I’m not sure what was covered by the 98 papers preceding it or any they have published since, but this one paper caused a very big stir and coined a name that has become a ‘household word’ in business, shorthand for ‘things are changing!’ The report from 2003 subtitled ‘Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to
2050’1 described how, based on the bank’s research into trends and forecasts, the future lay not with the original G6 countries but with the burgeoning economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China – the BRICs economies. The Goldman Sachs predictions – and remember, economics isn’t fortune telling – can be summed up as follows:
China to be larger than everyone but the US by 2016 India to be larger than Japan by 2032 BRICs economies to be larger than the G6 by 2039 China to be larger than the US by 2041.
