By Rik Kirkland, Fortune July 12 2007: 9:46 AM EDT
(Fortune Magazine) -- Just how red-hot is the current worldwide expansion? "This is far and away the strongest global economy I've seen in my business lifetime," U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson declared on a recent visit to Fortune's offices.
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The rise of the "BRICs" has altered his strategy and his travel schedule. (BRIC is an acronym Goldman coined in 2001 reflecting the rising economic power of Brazil, Russia, India, and China.)
"I helped make my career by being very disciplined about opening offices," he says. Yet in nine months Blankfein has announced or opened offices in São Paulo, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Mumbai, Qatar, and now Dubai. "We've never done anything close to that before," he marvels. "The week before Dubai, I was in Turkey, and before that, Russia and China. I'm really living the BRICs-plus-Middle East kind of life."
John Chambers, who last fall opened Cisco's (Charts, Fortune 500) new Globalization Center in Bangalore, seconds the notion that "this is the strongest global trend" of his career. "There is a unique balance today," he says. "More than half of GDP growth is coming from emerging countries. And yet the developed countries are also doing pretty well. It is something we have never seen before."
At Boeing (Charts, Fortune 500), Jim McNerney and his team, just back from the Paris Air Show, have booked 634 firm orders for their new 787 jet, which they will unveil in Seattle on 7/8/07 (ah, marketing!). That's more than for any launch in industry history, and thanks go "predominantly to Asian and other emerging-market buyers," says Laurette Koellner, president of Boeing International.
While the current pace isn't quite a record - according to the IMF the world grew at a 5.4% average annual rate from 1970 to 1973, vs. a projected 4.9% from 2003 through 2007- there's really no contest. When our ties were fatter and we were thinner, total world GDP was $13 trillion in constant dollars. Today it's more than $36 trillion. Not to mention, as investor Jim Rogers notes, "there are three billion people in places like Eastern Europe, Russia, India, China, and all of Asia who weren't participating last time around but who now are."
Edited by Rogerdodger, 12 July 2007 - 11:01 PM.
