Perhaps no other economic phenomenon better characterizes this initial decade of the twenty-first century than the development of -- and GDP growth in -- the developing world.

The economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China -- often referred to as the BRIC economies -- are major reasons why the developing world will grow 6.7% in 2008, far outpacing growth rates in the United States, Europe, and Japan.

New York Times columnist Roger Cohen argues that what we're seeing is not just the development of markets, not just 'the world is flat,' to use the term popularized by his Times colleague Thomas Friedman, but a reversal: the world is upside down. In Cohen's interpretation, the new economic tigers' accomplishments are large, ongoing, and system changing. Moreover, a power shift is occurring from the U.S and Europe to the new engines of growth.

For Cohen, Brazil is the economic model of the age: abundant minerals and crops, investment capital pouring in, a sugarcane-based energy policy, rising personal incomes, and an increasingly prosperous middle class, with plenty of land to mine, to plant, to expand. It is, in many ways, much of what the United States is not in 2008.

Further, the economic shift will require a shift in key international political institutions, including an expansion of the G-8 and the United Nations Security Council's permanent members, in Cohen's interpretation.

Economic Analysis: Cohen is on the mark regarding the continuing emerging market success story -- but less so regarding the United States, at least in my view. Other scholars predicted the decline of the United States in 1956, 1968, 1974, 1979, and 1991, and no doubt during several other periods besides. To be sure, today's circumstance is not a trivial one for the United States, domestically or internationally, and the new president's challenges will be enormous: the income tax increase necessary to get the nation's fiscal house in order, alone, will be a major task. Then there is health care, housing, education, energy policy, the trade deficit, infrastructure requirements, job creation, the war on terror, and of course, Iraq. But the freest, fairest nation in the world has faced even bigger hurdles before, and succeeded, and it will again, with the responsible, correct leadership.