To take another perspective, we can also see that the pressures from globalisation and technological change force us to think hard about the long-term competitiveness of our economies. While we have had a lively debate in recent years about the reasons for the relatively low level of productivity growth in the euro area, the remedies are still not easy to formulate.
Of most relevance to us, China and Australia are both in this group, but also other Asian economies, and oil exporters and commodity exporters from Latin America, Southern Africa, South-East Asia and Australasia. In the “West”, an Icelandic-style cloud of despondency still settles over the old Northern economies with large financial sectors and high production costs.