Final Word from Wednesday, October 15, 2008
George Soros, who was expecting the financial crisis to hit way back in 1998, said that trends can be identified but that the timing of a trend's culmination is always impossible to predict. The current crisis has been brewing for decades, but governments and individuals were nevertheless mostly unprepared to confront it. The solutions presented so far have mainly treated the symptoms. Another trend - the shift of power, wealth and global influence from West to East - has also been visible for decades. Nonetheless, surprisingly few observers have realized so far that the financial crisis, and the failure to deal with the root causes of it, is accelerating this gradual shift in power. China is being positioned as the potential big winner of this crisis. When President Jaroslav Míl of the Confederation of Industry threatened on Czech TV on Sun. that Czech companies might shift their exports to Eastern markets to protest against the way the crisis is being handled in the West, he was merely a bit ahead of the curve.[Czech Republic Asia Television and Transportation]
Glossary of difficult words
to converge - to come together from different directions so as to eventually meet;
culmination - the highest or climactic point of something;
to brew - to begin to develop;
root cause - basic, fundamental cause;
to be ahead of the curve - to be in front of a trend (as though the trend were depicted on a graph).