here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. the era of american global leadership, reaching back to the second world war, is over... the american free-market creed has self-destructed while countries that retained overall control of markets have been vindicated... in a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the soviet union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed... how symbolic that chinese astronauts take a spacewalk while the u.s. treasury secretary is on his knees. // john gray, former professor at the london school of economics