ABSTRACT
The world has changed. Sixty years ago, circa 1950, soon after the end of the Second World War and at the beginning of the post-colonial era, there were two sharp divides in the world: the East-West divide between communist and capitalist countries and the North-South divide between rich and poor countries. The distinction between East and West vanished with the collapse of communism in 1990, as capitalism emerged triumphant. The world of competing political ideologies was replaced by a world with a single dominant political ideology. The distinction between the North and the South has also become more diffused with the passage of time, as the reality has changed during the past three decades. The financial crisis of the late 2008, which led to the Great Recession, turned out to be the deepest crisis in capitalism since the Great Depression more than 75 years ago. The recovery is fragile and the prospects are uncertain. This has eroded the triumph of capitalism. But it has also reinforced the shift in the balance of economic power somewhat more towards the South. This process began some time ago, but is now more discernible. Even so, perceptions have changed slowly. There are oversimplified pictures of one billion people in rich countries and six billion people in poor countries, although there are poor people in rich countries and rich people in poor countries. It is time for a dispassionate analysis of how much this reality has changed.
