There is a book, the title of which I can't recall, which maintains that the next big wave of economic growth lies in one of the South American nations. It might have been Brazil. There is a lot of talk these days about Asian economies, and what they might or might not do in the future.

Significantly though, there a some large populations down below the equator, and apart from books like the one mentioned, nothing ever gets said about those places or what they might do. There are perhaps 200 million people in Brazil, maybe 40 million in Argentina, and 200 million or so in Indonesia. Also our own small contribution of 22 or so million. All up possibly half a billion. They may not make up half of the world's population, but then again, they have some of the best real estate.

Considering the disorganized mess which seems to emanate from places like Europe, it could well be time to consider some form of closer ties with those nations south of the equator. There has always been some form of northern hemisphere mentality that if it doesn't happen in the northern hemisphere it isn't important.

Whilst people down south spend their time studying what people do in Sweden ( which has a population which would make it completely uninteresting if it was located where say Paraguay is located), there could be some good reasons to take more heed of neighbours in the bottom half of the world (or top as we might think of it). We have excellent mineral resources, large populations basically doing nothing much at the moment and none of them, outside of the US perhaps, have been too friendly of late.

So it might be a nice idea to get some special trade treaties going with the south of the equator nations. Then maybe we could have a dual hemisphere world economy. They can have their PIGS recession (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain) and keep it up north. We on the other hand could take responsibility for our own destiny.