The BRICS Cartel
Are you familiar with what BRICS means? Well, it’s an economic cartel made up of Brazil, Russia, India, and China (so far). Now how’s that for an unholy alliance? This weirdness began in 2001 allegedly to promote internal growth and cooperation with the goal of becoming a dominant global economic power. 23 years later, it’s game even for them. In fact, in that time, the ‘I’ and ‘C’ countries have engaged in a shooting war along their common border on multiple occasions. Russia has devolved into a one trick economy based on oil and gas production. It’s true in the last score of years, they have had increases in their collective GDP, but they have also had increases in their political instability and social unrest.
Here’s A Great Idea!
Now they think it’s a great idea to add several more third world countries to the club. The countries currently being discussed for membership are Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. What could go wrong?? So now are they to be known as BRICAEIIMNSASTUAE++?? Does it remind you of any closer to home weird chaos??
Forming Of The EU
Let’s see . . . Back in 1993, EU was formed by Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Their stated plan was to work together to achieve economic and political harmony, with the goal of creating a unified Europe that could compete on a global scale. Actually, their true goal was to end American economic dominance. Since then, they have expanded to a total of 27 countries. Still, all are within the same continent. They have had their challenges from economic to political. They have created EU governmental institutions and have managed to remain a power in the global economy.
EU Takeaways
If we look at that alliance for clues we find some interesting conclusions. Two of the biggest takeaways for me are that the EU coined their own currency, the Euro, and they all had common borders within the same continent. These sophomore BRICS global economic dynamos have neither. They are not planning on a common currency (Yet). Their borders are spread as far and wide as the British Empire once was.
Another takeaway of note has been the ongoing challenges between the big and much smaller EU economies. Four of their poorly governed little sister countries were impacted by the global recession at the turn of the millennia to a much greater degree than the better managed ones.
Then There Were The PIGS Countries
Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain became known as the ‘PIGS’ countries. They had very high public debt, high unemployment, and weak growth that impacted their financial stability. It had a negative effect on the EU as a whole as well. The more prosperous countries didn’t want to bail them out because of their negligence of their countries’ economies as well as their lame political mismanagement. Now we have the Alphabet Soup Alliance of BRICAEIIMNSASTUAE++ with disparaged countries from Nigeria to China. What could possibly go wrong?? We live in interesting times.
