Problems and Promises of an Uncertain Future

To assert that the world looked very different in 1998 from what it was in 1980 is an understatement. Who would have predicted in 1980 that the Soviet Union would cease to exist, that Russia would be a democracy that has privatised many of its state-owned enterprises or that Eastern Europe would be liberated to pursue democracy and free markets? Or that regions of China would become thriving market economies growing at a breathtaking pace? Or that the two Germanies would be unified and the process would create serious economic problems for western Germany? Or that François Mitterrand, after winning the presidency on a socialist platform would later in the 1980s be presiding over an economy hardly more socialist than its neighbours and having a strong currency and at times a lower inflation rate than Germany? Or that Mexico would abandon its import substitution policies, open its economy to the rest of the world and have shares in some of its privatised companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange along with those of many other ‘emerging markets’? Or that India would rid itself of many of its tight controls over its industries and, despite memories of the East India Company, open itself to foreign investors? Or that Korea, already a ‘newly industrialised country’ in 1980, would achieve such a high level of real wages that some of its firms would migrate to China and Vietnam, attracted by lower wages?