I saw there were some forecasts of four times stronger growth in emerging markets on Brazilian news today, supposedly from some UN forum or something. I looked a little on Bloomberg, but didn't really bother to look too hard. Oh, here I found the snippet from BAND... http://bandnewstv.band.com.br/conteudo.asp?ID=102710&CNL=20 And UNCTAD - http://www.unctad.org/ . There is no doubt the Brazilian economy is growing increasingly stronger - as are other emerging markets finally doing after all these years of touting them. They are bringing millions of poor people out of the lowest poverty and turning them into moderate consumers for the world economy. Also, I do think that US economic influence is diminishing or eroding with time - and will not be able to continue to reflect around a quarter of world "worth" in the future.