Martin Wolf among the world's best economic journalists in this piece at least misses the mark. My view found in part in http://www.excellentfuture.ca/first-discussion-2-the-world-were-in-the-world-canada-is-in is that the near future -- say to 2025 -- looks very promising. His biggest fear that China's rise in the 21st century will disturb the world like Germany's in the 20th is I think misguided.

The Economist makes a strong case that the 'herbivorous' world imagined by Europeans and steadily codified and expanded since the Treaties of Rome in 1957 has left the region incapable of dealing with the reemergence of a 'carnivorous' world. The Copenhagen meetings effectively ended with the United States cutting a 'non-deal' with China and Brazil the details of which were then signed off by 'a group of European countries' but not as The Economist notes the EU.