''The old rule of forecasting was to make as many forecasts as
possible and publicise the ones you got right. The new rule is to
forecast so far in the future, no one will know you got it
wrong.''
Ruchir Sharma does neither. In Breakout Nations he shows why the
economic ''mania'' of the twenty-first century, with its unshakeable
faith in the power of emerging markets - especially China - to
continue growing at the astoundingly rapid and uniform pace of the
last decade, is wrong. The next economic success stories will not
be where we think they are.
In this provocative new book, Sharma analyses why the basic laws
of economic gravity such as the law of large numbers, which says
that the richer you are the harder it is to grow your wealth at a
rapid pace are already pulling China, Russia, Brazil and other
vast emerging markets back to earth. To understand which nations
will thrive and which will falter in a world reshaped by slower
growth, it is time to start looking at the emerging markets as
individual cases. Sharma argues that we must abandon our current
obsession with global macro trends and the fad for all-embracing
theories. He offers instead a more discerning, nuanced view,
identifying specific factors - economic, political, social - which
will make for slow or fast growth.
Spending much of his professional life travelling in these
countries as Head of Emerging Markets at Morgan Stanley, Sharma is
uniquely placed to present a first-hand insider''s account of these
new markets and the changes they are undergoing. As the years of
unbelievably swift growth draw to their close, this book shows us
how it is time for both investors and economists to halt their
blind thrust towards an impossible future.