The American playwright Arthur Miller once observed that an era has reached its end “when its basic illusions are exhausted.”2 Today the illusions of widening prosperity that defined the pre-crisis era are finally spent. The last to die was the faith that China’s boom would last indefinitely, lifting up countries from Russia to Brazil, from Venezuela to Nigeria, which had been thriving mainly by exporting commodities to the Chinese. Ever-growing demand from China would drive a “super cycle” of rising commodity prices and growing wealth from Moscow to Lagos. This storyline began to strain
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