Today, the United States, China, Japan, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom are among the largest economies in the world. Each of them has grown significantly in past decades and provides our global world with needed goods and services. This was not always the case; politics, religion and cultural differences kept us from working together. Throughout time, many of our leaders have put their best foot forward to improve our government relationships. As improvements in technology, communication and transportation evolve it has allowed us to grow globally.
On one hand, global economic growth is great. But on the other hand, being a global economy also has its drawbacks. As our economies work together and we rely more and more on each other, we have become more vulnerable. For example, war, government policies, political leaders and natural catastrophic situations can affect all of us. There are certainly pros and cons to having a global economy, but given recent events many of us may question this direction.
The recent situation in the Middle East and the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Japan show us how our markets and social humanity can affect not only that country, but also the rest of the world. Since the rebellious strikes in Libya, we have seen a spike in gas prices, commodities and will incur a great financial obligation for the military efforts to help the civilians of Libya. Also, the rebuilding of Japan will be very costly and cause slower production of their goods and services for quite some time. Not only is it a devastating situation for the people of Japan, but it also will hurt them economically for years to come.
Analysts have spent countless hours struggling to quantify the effects and make projections about how these situations will affect our global economy. Until it’s behind us and we look back on history we will not know the full impact
Without a doubt, economically we are more dependent today on other countries to provide importing and exporting of goods and services for growth. We will continue to experience this progression in our future, so we must adapt and learn to change as our environment changes.
