The 10 Rules of Successful Nations

by Ruchir Sharma

Investors take pains to find real-time intelligence from the field, and market movements accurately reflect their collective wisdom about the prospects of an economy. True, markets are subject to flights of panic, and critics like to quote Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Samuelson, who quipped in 1966 that the stock market had “predicted nine out of the last five recessions.” But Samuelson was no more impressed by economists, who have a worse forecasting record than markets. Ned Davis Research has shown that “economists, as a consensus, called exactly none” of the last seven recessions, dating back to 1970.

In the circle of political life, crisis forces a nation to reform, reform leads to good times, and good times encourage an arrogance that leads to a new crisis.