rich-world

A more fruitful approach might be to see the trend in terms of the need for greener investment outside the rich world.

The weather may be cold and wet, but in the rich world's financial markets it is beginning to feel like August all over again.

Taken together, the raw ingredients for breakfast in much of the rich world have increased in price by 25% since the beginning of June.

Private-debt burdens have begun to drop but across the rich world that has been offset by an increase in public burdens (see charts).

Second, improvements in rich world living standards may, for the moment at least, come from the capture of policy low-hanging fruit.

FEARS of a general deflation may be receding but in the rich world's housing markets at least, falling prices are still the norm.

How much longer until the rest of the rich world follows their lead?

And even corporate aspirations in the rich world lag far behind how much the public expects business to contribute to society.

Some saw it as a huge step for a country that had been pushing back against rich-world efforts to get China to deal with its emissions.

And the rich world, troubled as it is, must never give up in its effort to help the poor one to stand on its own feet.

The second failure is one of honesty. Too many rich-world politicians have failed to tell voters the scale of the problem.

Who ' s right ? The rich world does not seem to be on the precipice of deflation .

COMPUTERS have become such an integral part of life, in the rich world at least, that even social networking is done online.

As our special report argues, the rich world is losing its leadership in the sort of breakthrough ideas that transform industries.

One would expect emerging economies' money supply to outpace that of the rich world, because their GDP growth is faster.

To see why competition matters so much, consider the recent history of productivity in the rich world.

IT HAS been a thoroughly wretched summer in the rich world: weak growth, dismal jobs numbers and plunges in stockmarkets.

This special report will explore the reasons why progress in the rich world seems to have stalled and what can be done about it.

The internet is no longer a geeks' affair in the rich world, but woven into the fabric of business and life even in the poor one.

In the rich world, diseases that threatened millions of us just a generation ago no longer exist, hardly.

The resulting products often turn out to have huge appeal in the rich world too, especially in an era of belt-tightening.

The balance-sheets of emerging-market and rich-world banks are like the coasts of America and Africa: they look like a good fit.

Around much of the rich world, hopes that housing markets would be well on the road to recovery by now have been disappointed.

In most of the rich world ageing populations have been driving up the cost of public health care and state pensions.

Within the rich world, America's economy looked the best of a bad bunch.

Given the state of residential property around the rich world, perhaps the victims are suffering from post-traumatic amnesia.

We in the rich world are used to the idea of our big companies dumping their dirty and anti-social industries on the poor countries.

Surely the rational policy for the governments of the rich world is now to keep growth rates as close to zero as possible?

Well, a good guide is to think, "What did we do last time the rich world got serious about developing another region of the world? "

Across the rich world the supply of workers is about to slow as the number of pensioners rises.

Some were counting on China to prop up the global economy, as much of the rich world falls into recession.

Most of them missed out on the mainframe era, which has left many rich-world banks saddled with ageing and inflexible computer systems.

The rich world has been stuck doing the latter for most of the last century, and lately they haven't been doing it as well.

Often they are just as effective as the gold-plated kit used in the West, yet they are rarely found in rich-world hospitals.

That would push jobless rates into double digits in much of the rich world and leave many countries perilously close to deflation.

Rich-world trade has recovered from the trough too, though it has not yet made up all the ground lost since the credit crunch began.

This painful truth is no longer news in the rich world, and many governments have started to deal with the ageing problem.

Perhaps some also welcome the sight of a developing nation emerging as an increasingly serious challenger to the rich world.

However, Tao Wang, an economist at UBS, argues that this rich-world yardstick is misleading.

Jenny was a poor girl living in a rich world, named her baby Hope when she was just fourteen.

The quarter-point increase marked an end to the rich world's longest economic stagnation since the Great Depression.

Technology and globalisation are remaking labour markets across the rich world, to the relative detriment of the lower-skilled.

That would require a huge and unlikely shake-up in school education in the rich world.

Countries that have leant on exporting cheap goods to the rich world need instead to turn to internal sources of spending.

The prices paid are staggering: it is as if the rich world's devastating housing bust hadn't happened.

If an inflation psychology is returning, not all the rich world's central bankers appear to be treating it with the same degree of fear.

Except for China, the developing world is mostly young, which means that its savings tend to be higher than those of the ageing rich world.

But none of the economies outside the OECD is big enough to absorb the excess private saving of the rich world.

I would add here that America's recalcitrance relative to the rest of the rich world reflects two things about the United States.

Not so long ago, the rich world used to regard emerging economies as risky and unstable.

Many critics of environmentalism argue that it is a rich-world luxury: that the poor need adequate food before they need super-clean air.

Too many rich-world politicians have failed to tell voters the scale of the problem.

But it now also has to contend with a strong yen, thanks in part to loose monetary policy in the rich world.

Economists do not expect a repeat of the 1970s, when oil-price rises led to "stagflation" in the rich world.

The speed of the rout (see chart) has been scary for a place that was supposed to be largely insulated from the rich world's troubles.

It seems strange, then, that inflation is now touted as a solution to the rich world's economic troubles.

Until recently big brewers tried to make up for flagging sales in the rich world by pushing into emerging markets.

According to the IMF, America's structural deficit and the growth in its debt over the medium term are among the worst in the rich world.

But when it comes to the bottom of the pyramid in the rich world, the gurus lose interest.

And, fourth, why has the land of the high-tech miracle got one of the rich world's lowest labour-participation rates, just 55%?

Much of the stuff that China makes is no longer produced in the rich world, so it is difficult to establish a direct link.

Bumper inventories, built up during the downturn, are running down as the rich world recovers and Asia puts on a remarkable growth spurt.

High debt levels across the rich world owe much to the impact of weak growth on tax revenues.

Gun murders are consequently rare, at just over one killing per million people per year, one of the lowest rates in the rich world.

The technology was adopted by farmers in the rich world outside Europe, but poor countries seemed likely to be left behind.

Rather than being pushed roughly out of hospital beds, they stay three times as long as the rich-world average.

People in the rich world are used to forking out for those of their fellow citizens who have incurable conditions.

Rapid industrialisation across the emerging world poses big challenges, not least to the rich world's reliance on cheap resources.

In an information rich world, assessing, evaluating, applying information to specific problems are critical issues.

The shift in economic power from West to East is accelerating, says John O' Sullivan. The rich world will lose some of its privileges.

In parts of the rich world, mainly Japan and western Europe, that age group already makes up nearly a quarter of the population.

ECONOMIC policymakers across the rich world face two delicate balancing acts over the new few years.

If the rich world, through CDM arrangements, can help China achieve that, so much the better.

THE economic empowerment of women across the rich world is one of the most remarkable revolutions of the past 50 years.

But the rich world has a clear choice: learn from the mistakes of the past, or else watch Leviathan Inc grow into a true monster.

Britain has embarked on a great gamble. Sooner or later, many other rich-world countries will have to take it too.

They point out that its debt burden is no worse than in other parts of the rich world.

Clever technology can help solve two big problems in health care: overspending in the rich world and under-provisioning in the poor world.

Western fans arriving in South Africa for the World Cup could be forgiven for thinking that they were still in the rich world.

The challenges facing the rich world's central banks have increased as a result of the financial crisis (see article).

Today's faltering GDP growth is a hangover from that boom and adds to the sense of malaise in the rich world.

In the rich world, where beer drinking has peaked or is in decline, brewers have been acquiring rivals and slashing costs.

However, a few emerging economies have more creative unemployment-insurance schemes than anything in the rich world.

THANKS to the collateral damage from the financial crisis, government deficits have surged across the rich world.

Much of the imbalance in savings between the rich world and the emerging markets is made up by the sale of government bonds.

Monetary policy is looser than it has ever been across the rich world, with rates at or below 1% in the biggest economies.

Nor, with the exception of commercial property and leveraged buy-outs, did the rich world's firms go on a debt binge.

Developing-country bidders have created a more vibrant market for the control of rich-world companies that keeps managers on their toes.

Each innovation adds less to rich-world prosperity than the adoption of an established technology does to a poor country.

Lack of growth means that, despite Mr Tremonti, the public debt is still 120% of GDP, the rich world's third-biggest.

That will certainly be the case if poor, fast-growing countries follow the economic trajectories of those in the rich world.

Yet still the EU's Common Agricultural Policy and the United States' Farm Bill remain sacrosanct in the eyes of the rich world.

Across the rich world, affluence, aging and advance technology are driving up health spending faster than income.

Guyana is seeking money from the rich world to help keep most of its land forested.

One size in varied Africa does not fit all. The rich world could, for instance, offer time-limited trade preferences.

ACROSS the rich world, governments with ageing populations are worried about soaring health-care costs.

Corporate America has long complained about swingeing punitive damages, unknown in the rest of the rich world.

The rich world's big central banks are gradually unwinding the emergency liquidity facilities they introduced at the height of the crisis.

Mr Osborne, it seems, wants Britain to be like Germany, the rich world's economic powerhouse (see article).

Many see the rich world as old, debt-ridden and out of ideas compared with the young, zestful and high-saving emerging markets.

It spends 1% of its fast-growing GDP on research, half the rich-world share but almost double the average in the rest of Latin America.

Now that commodity prices have plunged, the inflation risk has dramatically receded across the rich world.

In other words, emerging markets have adopted different policies, as well as ignoring the rich world's philosophical agonising. But why?

Those anxious that the rich world's economic power is ebbing might welcome a few emerging-market slip-ups.

Those risks are probably worth taking, given the likely weakness of the rich world's recovery and the scale of its fiscal task.

By the end of 2010, unemployment in much of the rich world is likely to be above 10%.

This does not mean the rich world is close to fulfilling its promise at Copenhagen.

Round the rich world a consensus has emerged that austerity should mean spending cuts rather than tax increases.

Some blurring of the line between the public and private sectors occurs in the rich world.

As the rich world emerges from the financial crisis, faster productivity growth could counteract the drag from adverse demography.

The rich world no longer welcomes the tired and the huddled; it looks set to compete ever more fiercely for the bright and the qualified.

Although export subsidies are a potent symbol of the rich world's iniquitous farm policies, they have little impact on global commerce.

This green zeal is not confined to the rich world: Taiwan, Bangladesh, and Zanzibar have already banned plastic bags completely.

SANTANDER, the rich world's fourth-biggest bank by market value, is a beacon of hope and a source of despair for other firms.

But the damage if oil prices spiked and stayed high for a long time could be severe for the recovering economies of the rich world.

This simultaneous shift in the rich world's core as well as the enfeebled euro periphery raises two questions.

Over the next few decades half the rich world's general papers may fold.

As Mr Drum acknowledges, manufacturing employment has declined steadily, and this has been true across the rich world.

But now demand from emerging economies is helping to prop up rich-world exports to a larger degree than is commonly realised.

Britain used to be the third-biggest killer of children in the rich world; it is now the 17th.

Ultimately, though, the rich world may have to live with higher taxes, less-generous bailouts, or both.

Poor countries suggested language that would allow compulsory licensing of low-carbon technologies developed in the rich world.

Such a growth agenda won't transform the rich world's prospects.

But even the most grizzled veterans of rich-world journalism still seem glad to earn extra money tutoring tyros in poor countries.

The price of avoiding deflation in the rich world today may be a bust in the emerging world tomorrow.

But what makes sense for individual countries may not make sense for the rich world as a whole.

Portugal, one of the rich world's most rigid economies, must become one of the more flexible.

Not only do other emerging markets have plenty of their own stains, they are far more exposed to future spills from the rich world as well.

As the credit freeze spreads beyond the rich world, sales to fast-growing emerging markets are threatened too.

But markets may also sense that America is likely to recover more quickly than other struggling rich-world economies.

As China and India become better off the wage gap with the rich world will narrow and the pace of offshoring will slow.

Pay structures are hard to devise when middle managers in rich-world subsidiaries expect to earn more than their seniors in head office.

That has happened at a time when the rich world's growth prospects are deteriorating.

The rich world does not even have this feeble justification for agricultural protectionism.

But rich-world governments have found it hard to summon up the political courage to act.

The rich world's bank bail-outs may limit the squeeze, but the flow of capital to the emerging world will slow.

Six months ago the Asian economies were among the hardest hit in the world, as exports to the rich world plunged.

Policy decisions will also influence the relative strength of the recoveries in the emerging economies versus the rich world.

They injected hundreds of billions of dollars of public capital, leaving the state as part-owner of many of the rich world's biggest banks.

The last time the rich world got serious about developing another region was in the late 1940s.

Overall, the rich world's increase in "carbon imports" is six times bigger than cuts in the developed countries' own industrial emissions.

This may change if rich-world growth picks up, increasing demand for the more sophisticated goods that industrialised countries export.

So no government in the rich world is likely to open its borders to all comers, as Mr Legrain urges.

MILLIONS of school-leavers in the rich world are about to bid a tearful goodbye to their parents and start a new life at university.

History will not repeat itself exactly. But bubbly asset prices do risk overreaction from rich-world central bankers.

But new splits are opening up, especially in the rich world, and with them come ever more chances for friction.

That implies a global credit tightening could have as big an impact on emerging markets as slowing import demand in the rich world.

The better-run countries of Latin America also have more policy weapons available than most rich-world economies.

ONE of the paradoxes of human biology is that the rich world has fewer children than the poor world.

Even today African farmers use less than 1% of the fertiliser that we use in the rich world.

Rich-world consumers are saving harder to pay down debts and cautious businesses need somewhere to park their surplus cash.

Few rich-world businesses can feel confident about expanding capacity when the outlook for consumer spending is so cloudy.

But with unemployment rates in parts of the rich world at post-war highs, that may no longer hold true for many people.

But the collective obsession with short-term austerity across the rich world is hurting.

When the rich world is teetering on the edge of its worst recession since the 1930s, this is no time to insist on balanced budgets.

The rich world was you, America, and the region that needed to be developed was my world, Europe. That was post-War Europe.

In 2011, on current plans, the rich world is set for its biggest collective budget cuts in at least 40 years.

The rich world's recovery from the Great Recession began two years ago.

Japan now has one of the rich world's weakest venture-capital markets.

The rich world will only bounce back when its financial engine starts working for a sustainable future, writes Simon Zadek.

The EAC says it would negotiate better deals with the rich world than individual African countries can.

And the rich world's financial crisis and its aftermath is accelerating the shift of economic power eastwards.

Although unemployment levels may remain among the lowest in the rich world, many of the jobs will be lowly ones.

Many Keynesian economists are aghast, arguing that savage budget cuts will fell a fragile recovery and condemn the rich world to deflation.

Take the difference in company ethics, for instance, which worries plenty of rich-world managers.

But he overstates the case in the developing world, thus obscuring possible solutions to the problems of rich-world aging.

Even so, the hit to potential growth in the rich world is likely to be bigger.

TRADITIONAL media may be declining in much of the rich world, but in poor countries it is booming.

The surge in private savings in the wake of the economic crisis has masked big changes in the rich world's sovereign-bond markets.

That, at least, is the view from the rich world.

Furthermore, the increase in female employment in the rich world has been the main driving force of growth in the past couple of decades.

Companies in the rich world are confronted with a rapidly ageing workforce.

As a result, it is claimed, China is no longer exporting deflation to the rich world, but inflation.

So thick is the gloom pervading the rich world that the once-regular emerging-market crises have almost been forgotten.

AS THE rich world's governments struggle to contain the costs of health care, they are starting to scrutinise the price of drugs.

Nor does a new outbreak of high inflation seem imminent, given the pervasive deflationary conditions in most of the rich world.

As it happens, the cost advantage is shifting towards the firm's rich-world operations.

But in a nod to the rich world, the fund gained some independence from the climate conference itself.

It is thus largely a phenomenon of poor and middle-income countries; the rich world has put most of its urbanisation behind it.

Even though the number over 65 has doubled in 20 years, Japan's health-care system remains one of the cheapest and best in the rich world.

Earlier this year it was argued that such export-dependent economies could not revive until customers in the rich world did.

The Triffin dilemma is echoed in contemporary worries about the rich world's public debts and its currencies.

Another rich-world bubble may be unlikely in the near term, but things feel very different in emerging markets.

But in all other respects the Trafigura case is unremarkable. It's just another instance of the rich world's global fly-tipping.

The rich world, though, has brought infectious disease under control and, AIDS aside, the memory dims with every generation.

And only some of the stuff its better-paid workers buy will come from the moribund rich world.

There is a consensus among all the candidates that the federal corporate tax rate of 35%, the highest in the rich world, must be slashed.

Most "mega-cap" companies have been penalised more heavily than rich-world peers in the same industry.

Even so, the faster spread of technology to poor countries is weakening the rich world's comparative advantage in high-tech sectors.

THE property market illustrates the growing divergence between rich-world and emerging economies.

The countries that stand behind the rich world's other main currencies (the dollar, the yen and the pound) have troubles of their own.

Demand in the rich world will remain weak, especially in countries with over-indebted households and broken banking systems.

Output is sluggish and credit is growing weakly or shrinking across much of the rich world.

Financial markets, particularly in the rich world, have become increasingly integrated.

And feelings about the big questions of culture and geopolitics are as ambivalent in the rich world as they are in Muslim states.

Private spending in the rich world is weak ; government spending is out of fashion ; and interest rates are as low as they can go .

The public finances may not be in great shape, but they are hardly the worst in the rich world.

Western investors' new interest in gold has coincided with the rich world's deepest period of economic turmoil since the 1930s.

Even this year, half the deterioration of the rich world's deficits has stemmed from economic weakness.

Though India is industrialising fast, in the rich world we still produce 10 times as much carbon per head as Indians do.

Officials from other emerging economies also fretted about the consequences of the rich world's policy choices.

The OECD used the figures to urge more people to attend university across the rich world and to encourage governments to fund it.

Emerging markets are converging with the rich world, improving both incomes and productivity.

It now also has to contend with a stronger yen, thanks in part to loose monetary policy elsewhere in the rich world.

But in parts of the rich world such optimism may now be misplaced.

True, the three biggest rich-world economies, the United States, Germany and Japan, are under less pressure.

Both governments feel strongly that the onus of dealing with global warming lies with the rich world.

Others decry it as a distraction from the need to cut costs and improve quality in rich-world health systems.

America's economy may have some unique troubles, but its fortunes are still strongly tied to the rest of the rich world.

GOVERNMENTS in the rich world are announcing record-breaking deficits and their credit ratings are under threat.

With austerity packages kicking in across much of the rich world, it is a race many buildings will lose.

PRICE inflation remains relatively subdued in the rich world, even though central banks are busily printing money.

LISTEN carefully, and you may detect a giant sucking sound across the rich world.

The rich world's nascent recoveries are losing momentum even though joblessness remains worryingly high.

America is far less inclined than many of its rich-world peers to use taxation and redistribution to reduce inequality.

Today everyone in the rich world has a washing machine, so people increasingly seek to advertise their hipness or virtue instead.

As Britain's tax on bank bonuses shows, fiscal policy in the rich world risks being driven by rising public fury at bankers and bail-outs.

The spectre of sovereign default, therefore, has returned to the rich world.

The immediate future of the globalisation debate depends much on the economies of the rich world.

Contrary to received wisdom, slashing the rich world's trade-distorting subsidies has a relatively small effect on poor countries.

Carl Pope says it's time the rich world provided a different model of financial support.

FOR months the rich world's policymakers have quietly pressed China to abandon its exchange-rate peg with the dollar.

OVER the past few years the reputations of the rich world's central bankers have fluctuated wildly.

Rich-world banks and investors seeking higher returns when interest rates were low had bought a lot of the ropy mortgage securities.

When monetary conditions in the rich world are loose, emerging economies are prone to lending binges and asset bubbles.

Is there a deus ex machina, a device that will rescue the rich world from its plight?

The euro area's consumers have high savings and low debt by rich-world standards but are nervous all the same.

With rich-world interest rates at rock bottom, emerging economies are likely to face continuing surges of foreign capital.

AMERICA may lead the rich world in periods of prosperity, but Europe has shown a greater talent for dealing with recession.

But they are another aspect of how Japanese industry is lagging what the rest of the rich world regards as best practice.

News providers throughout the rich world are urgently casting around for new models.

Copper is less sensitive to the ups and downs of rich-world economies than it was, however.

Which is why rich-world climate activists are placing their faith in two factors that appeal to India's and China's self-interest.

In the rich world, collapsing stock markets and corporate scandals have shaken confidence and mutual trust.

Thanks in part to rock-bottom interest rates in the rich world, foreign capital is flooding back into emerging economies.

The biggest concern of all, though, is how the rich world's most indebted country will foot the bill.

At the same time the best hospitals in Asia and Latin America now rival or surpass many hospitals in the rich world for safety and quality.

With no end in sight for the rich world's recession, China's exports will continue to slide this year.

Near-zero rich-world rates encourage yield-hungry investors to place their short-term funds in emerging markets.

Much of the rich world's workforce has been squeezed on two sides, by stagnant wages and rising costs.

Even so, in aggregate, the developing world will still outpace the rich world by a factor of four.

But in much of the rich world, house prices have moved in tandem over the past decade.

BANKS in France, Italy and Spain performed better than most in the rich world during the turmoil of 2008-09.

For a decade after 1997 China's effect on world prices had made life easier for the rich world's central banks.

Worse, economic engines in the rich world are running ever slower as countries exhaust easy sources of rapid growth.

China's rapid urbanisation and economic expansion helped them weather the recent recession in the rich world.

Like their rich-world counterparts, governments are battling to limit the damage (see article).

Hunkering down for austerity is not enough. The rich world needs a strategy for growth.

The other big worry is inflation, even though economies in the rich world surely still have more to fear from deflation.

Mr Zhao thinks Geely's cars can now pass the strict emissions and safety standards of the rich world.