The Economist had this fascinating chart up the other day detailing the history of global economic output as compiled by the late Angus Maddison whose calculation methods (in case you were wondering) may have died with him. Contrary to what most people might believe, robust economic activity hasn’t always been a European affair (see the Dark Ages).
Note that the stacked 100 percent chart format with a portion of it missing is somewhat misleading because, looking at it quickly, you might think that output 2,000 years ago was, somehow, comparable to what we see today after properly adjusting for one factor or another. Surely it is not. In fact, you’d probably find that up until the West began to dominate in the 19th century, there wasn’t a whole lot of GDP anywhere in the world.
“Although assets in other currencies and forms are not an ideal replacement for U.S. Treasury bonds, diversification should be a basic principle,” Yu wrote in the China Securities Journal.
Dagong Global Credit Rating Co used its first foray into sovereign debt to paint a revolutionary picture of creditworthiness around the world, giving much greater weight to “wealth creating capacity” and foreign reserves than Fitch, Standard & Poor’s, or Moody’s.
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