India, Brazil | featured news

Leaders of the five BRICS nations fueling global economic growth plan the creation of a development bank in a direct challenge to the World Bank that they accuse of Western bias.

The U.S. trade deficit grew to $42 billion in July, widened by fewer exports to Europe, India and Brazil that offset a steep decline in oil imports.

The global economy is in the worst shape since the dark days of 2009. Six of the 17 countries that use the euro currency are in recession. The U.S. economy is struggling again. And the economic superstars of the developing world - China, India and Brazil - are in no position to come to the rescue. They're slowing, too.

The economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China account for 20 percent of the world economic output, and rising. That’s up four fold in the last decade, according to a report released yesterday by the International Monetary Fund. Despite the growth, problems in the core economies had made the post-2008 world a difficult one for the big four emerging markets.

Proponents of so-called "green accounting" - gathered in Rio de Janeiro this week for the Rio Earth Summit - hope that putting dollar values on resources will slam the brakes on unfettered development. A mentality of growth at any cost is already blamed for disasters like the chronic floods that hit deforested Haiti or the raging sand storms that have swept regions of China, worsening desertification.

As his global teleconference broke up in disarray on September 11, 2001, a top economist at a U.S. investment bank began to ponder what the attacks on the United States might tell him about the future shape of the world.