The Story of the BRICs

I've seen this guy - Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs... talk about the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China - on CNBC. This is the whole story of how he popularized the acronym, and over a decade changed the way people thought of those countries - and the way they thought of themselves and their relationship with each other.

The article has rather something of a sting in the tail:

It all might sound reminiscent of the way the British empire operated in the 19th century – or the way the Russian Communist party once tried to knit the diverse peoples of the Soviet Union into a single ideologically based nation. Only this time, it is MBA programmes and Goldman training courses, rather than British public schools or communist training camps, that provide the cultural glue. And – perhaps most important of all – Goldman Sachs (unlike earlier empires) is not overtly acting with a nationalist or political agenda; insofar as it has a real loyalty, it is to its own bottom line and its ability to make profits.

Put it another way: Goldman will keep flying Old Glory only as long as it believes that there is profit to be made under that banner. No wonder a senior member of the US government remarked a couple of years ago, partly in jest, that sooner or later, Goldman “is going to have to choose whether it wants to really be American or not”. If O’Neill is even half-right in his predictions, it may not be a straightforward choice.

Wow. Note this is not Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, this is the Financial Times. Worth reading if you are a) interested in the relative prospects of countries around the world and b) are interested in how Goldman does its thing, from a mainstream financial industry perspective.

(Nota Bene - everyone can read something like two Financial Times articles a month without registering; I registered and got more; I think it was a dozen or so... I eventually started paying them. (Heh.) So, if anyone would like a copy and is blocked / too hassled by registration or whatever, email me and I can email you a copy through the FT website.)