Extreme disparity attack on democracy

The economic geography of the world is changing. The eurozone faces the specter of another round of stagnation, Japan has slipped into recession, and the United States, despite relatively strong performance in the latter part of the year, has raised concerns worldwide with its exit from quantitative easing.

Emerging economies, however, have continued to perform well. India and Indonesia are growing at more than 5 percent a year, Malaysia at 6 percent, and China by more than 7 percent.

The scale of the global change can be seen when purchasing power parity (PPP) - a measure of the total amount of goods and services that a dollar can buy in each country - is taken into account. According to the 2011 figures, India is now the world's third-largest economy in terms of PPP-adjusted GDP, ahead of Germany and Japan. The data also showed that China would overtake the US as the world's largest economy in PPP terms sometime in 2014 - a shift that, according to our (World Bank) estimates, occurred on Oct 10.