But of course the world continues to change

Industrialized countries are now less than half of global industrial production. Should we still call them industrialized countries Under the huge cloud of dust of information caused by the explosion of the volcano Lehman Brothers in fact played a formidable redistribution of the cards in the world economy. It appears in the language: one of the Ministers French more in contact with the international says, whenever he speaks of the emerging countries, they have emerged; a great boss, Maurice Lévy (Publicis), proposes to replace the name "emerging" by "submergents." She also appears in the figures given by the experts of the credit insurer Euler-Hermes: from 2007 to 2011, production will be increased by 29 in Asia, while it will have declined by 2 in Europe! Never global tectonic plates of the economy not have moved as well as fast. We must change our categories of countries to describe the world and therefore think.

The globalized economy outlines in the 19th century, with the great waves of colonization. His description points after the second world war, when dozens of nations took their independence. In 1949, President Harry Truman spoke for the first time in "underdeveloped", different, therefore, developed or industrialized countries. Activists or journalists, they prefer the more concise concepts of "North" and "South", a South also often called "third world". The Communist country remain on the sidelines, behind the iron curtain.

With the rise of this hypocrisy of the language that is the "political correctness", the "underdeveloped" became the "developing world", then "in development". LDCs include even countries which showed not the slightest sign of development, assembled from the 1970s in the category of "least developed countries". Today, the traditionnalistes international organizations such as the Conference of the United nations for trade and development (UNCTAD) or the international labour office always reason with these categories.

But, of course, the world continues to change. From the 1970s appear "newly industrialized countries": four Dragons of Asia, and then five babies Tigers them also in Asia, Latin American jaguars... In the 1980s, a World Bank economist breaks lexical conformity of large organizations by creating the concept of "emerging economies". The Communist countries, they are "in transition". The g-20, him, appeared at the end of the 1990s, is undefinable in economic terms. For its part, the IMF distinguished new industrial economies developed countries and developing countries. But developed countries are those with the most declined last year... No, decidedly, need new categories. The scholar Jeffrey Garten launched the ten "emerging big" (China, Poland, Turkey, etc.). The bank Goldman Sachs economists have had success with the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) that others have transformed in Basic (the South Africa replaces the Russia), and then they offered the N - 11 - the "next eleven".

The problem of these clusters is that they are both partial, fleeting and little use - except to investors for which they have often been forged. At the time where multiply the signs of a regionalisation of the world, geography would be more operational: Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, Americas... But experience has shown that it is always a binary, as vision noted writer Georges Perec in his delightful "think/classify": "male and female, animal and plant, singular plural, right /gauche" even if "Unfortunately, it doesn't work." The historian Fernand Braudel, he spoke of "heart" and "periphery". How to succeed in cutting the world into two It may be illuminating to reason in "integrated" and "non-integrated" (including the "disintegrated"), integration setting in the trade in products and sophisticated services. But today, there is the line of brilliant failure: that which separates Asia from the rest of the world.