This means that if the Old Continent does not respond appropriately to the globalization challenges, in a few dozen years, all major global decisions will be made outside Europe, especially if the integration tendencies are continued in Asia, including the possible adoption of a single currency, which may be tentatively called the “asian”. 4 Thirdly, the share of Africa in the world's population will be a mirror image of the European trends and will increase almost threefold. It is still a very poor continent, of an unfavourable climate and poorly qualified workforce. However, in my opinion, the African countries will join the process of globalization in the manufacturing and services sectors sooner than it is expected, and some countries of the African continent may experience a very high economic growth rate in the decades to come, if their key political decision-makers take the chance that the globalization process gives. 3  For estimates please refer to http://esa.un.org/unpp/  4  On 4 May 2006 in Hyderabad, India during the 39th annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank a consensus was reached by the finance ministers of Japan, China, and South Korea. Han Ducksoo, Jin Renqing and Sadakazu Tanigaki agreed that under the Chiang Mai initiative, joint research will be conducted concerning the possibility of introducing the single currency in Asia. During that meeting, the parties decided to join the forces of the Asian countries to change the allocation of voting rights in the International Monetary Fund.
Prior to the introduction of inflation targeting in 1992, the UK had searched – in vain – to find a credible anchor for monetary policy and inflation expectations. The simplicity and clarity provided by a numerical target for inflation helped to establish the credibility of monetary policy and was instrumental in fostering the period of stable growth and low inflation enjoyed in the decade or so prior to the financial crisis. But in the aftermath of the crisis and faced with five years of almost no growth, it is natural for people to ask what monetary policy is doing to help get the economy going. The control of inflation is important but so too is supporting the creation of jobs as unemployment rose to its highest level for almost twenty years. There was a real risk that this would start to erode the trust and support of inflation targeting; to damage its democratic legitimacy. This was arguably evident earlier this year in the discussions in the media and amongst some commentators as to whether the framework of monetary policy should be altered, say to adopt a nominal GDP target or for the MPC to have an explicit objective for growth. A subtext of that discussion was that the inflation target was in some way acting as a constraint on the support that monetary policy could provide to the faltering recovery. To repeat: such criticism is misplaced.