5 Lessons From the Rise of the BRICs

It's hard to believe but the BRIC acronym has been around for a decade.  Jim O'Neil the chairman of Goldman Sachs asset management coined the phrase that come to mean the fastest growing emerging markets Brazil, Russia, India, and China.


The The Atlantic out together the following 5 Lessons From the Rise of the BRICs 

1. THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS,  Perhaps the broadest lesson from the emergence of the BRICs is that no rise is complete without the triumph of the middle class. 
2. TRADE IS EVERYTHING,  For any economy, growing is all about selling. And when you're a small economy, growing is about selling to somebody bigger. In other words, there is no such thing as extraordinary growth without extraordinary growth in trade 
3. STATE CAPITALISM WORKS,  State capitalism means state-owned firms like the massive China National Petroleum Corporation or Gazprom, but it also means heavy regulation, frequent intervention, and sometimes a degree of state control over markets and firms that doesn't look so capitalist. 
4. CORRUPTION IS THE KILLER,  Think about how much of a problem corporate and industrial influence over politics has become in the U.S. Now imagine the companies are bigger, politicians face little or no public accountability, and there's often not a clear line between CEOs and the government bureaucrats who regulate them, who might even share an office or a boss.  
5. STRONG ECONOMIES NEED STRONG STATES AND STRONGER SOCIETIES,  If state capitalism is the BRICs' greatest strength, and corruption their greatest weakness, then the lesson may be that healthy government-led economies require healthy governments. That means a state that will manage the economy responsibly and selflessly, something that's not so easy when the only powerful institutions in a country are the state and the industries it must manage. 

 

Leaders attend a joint news conference during BRICS summit in Sanya, China / Reuters