Watching the Watchers

I've not had a lot to say on the Economic crisis, if only because I doubt my own ability to predict the future currents, and so could offer little beyond a recap of the daily news for my readers. In light of that, this backgrounder by Niall Ferguson, seems a useful read

We are living through the end of a phenomenon that Moritz Schularick of Berlin's Free University and I christened "Chimerica." In this view, the most important thing to understand about the world economy over the past 10 years has been the relationship between China and America. If you think of it as one economy called Chimerica, that relationship accounts for around 13 percent of the world's land surface, a quarter of its population, about a third of its gross domestic product and somewhere more than half of global economic growth in the past six years.

For a time, this symbiotic relationship seemed almost perfect: One half did the saving, and the other half did the spending

I'm not really sure why Ferguson is classed as a Historian, given his current world focus, (I assume it lends gravitas to ones claims) but he certainly is a figure worth watching and reading regularlly, even if his friendship with McCain does tend to lead him to follow a historical loser down a no ends path.

If nothing else, it pays to keep an eye on the competition. Certainly his industriousness forces one to be honest and forthright in their acts.