Excerpt
The idea that we live in an increasingly interconnected and turbulent world is something of a cliché — yet true and important nevertheless. Decisions made by the U.S. Federal Reserve affect the purchasing power of villagers in southern Thailand; consumer demand in Europe and North America affects the output of factory workers in eastern China, which affects the jobs of oil workers in Brazil, Russia, and elsewhere. Elite investors now routinely send their capital abroad in a ceaseless quest for new opportunities and high returns; whether they realize it or not, hundreds of millions of less highflying people do the same indirectly, through their mutual or pension funds. So global economic forecasting — trying to look past current events to glimpse what’s coming over the horizon — has become an exercise of general, not specialized, concern.
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