The integration of China and other emerging economies into the world trading system has, in effect, more than doubled the global labour force, and by curbing workers' bargaining power it has restrained pay demands in most developed economies in recent years.

ECONOMIST: Why China is not to blame for the surge in global inflation

The optimists' gloss on all that was that Italy's financial woes are being quarantined - and the rest of the eurozone is galloping towards the kind of fiscal integration that would (at the last) allow the European Central Bank to (in effect) underwrite the credit-worthiness of all member states (see my post, The eurozone's borrowing costs may stay lethally high, for more on this).

BBC: Are markets betting on IMF bailout of Italy?

He considers the customs union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, which comes into effect on January 1st 2012, as the nucleus of a Russian equivalent of the European Union's growth-boosting integration.

ECONOMIST: Russia��s familiar next ruler