Four letter words can pack quite a punch as we all know very well, right!. When Jim o’Neill of Goldman Sachs uttered the four letter word ‘BRIC’ in a research report on emerging markets way back in 2003, he had the whole financial and political world chanting it in unison. The second time around Jim got around grouping countries and creating a new four letter acronym, he had the world watching him very closely. I would believe he would be so powerful an economist by now, that there would be countries lobbying to just get into his list.FT news on 17 Jan 2011 reveals (Article titled: BRIC creator adds newcomers to list) that Jim is about to release his next batch of emerging countries four letter word this month. (It’s a side story that Jim is a lazy guy who takes 7 years to come up with a four letter word). As per the news report, Goldman Sachs Asset Management plans to add Mexico, South Korea, Turkey and Indonesia into this new grouping and it goes on to quote Jim O’Neill who said that ‘any economy from the emerging markets world that is already 1 per cent of global GDP or more, and has the potential for that to rise, has the ability to be taken seriously’
I did my paper napkin math and what he says does add up. The World GDP (Nominal) is at USD 58 Trillion and all of Jim’s new countries seem to be above the 1% of world GDP inflection point. Turkey has a GDP of around USD 600 Bn, Indonesia has a GDP of USD 540 Bn, South Korea has a GDP of 840 Bn while Mexico leads the pack with 880 Bn.
With some smart global lobbying and Goldman Sachs apple polishing, some policy maker in Saudi Arabia (At 440 Bn..they're a few hundred billion short of Indonesia...but closing in fast) or maybe Egypt (similar population as Turkey...ahem GDP is a bit lower) should have tried to make a pitch to these guys to get included. I understand there may be more reasons that what I want to know to start thinking why Iran could not lobby itself into the list, but the others surely are Big Brother’s regional darlings, aren’t they? Someone once told me“Everyone is beautiful, if you squint a bit”, hmm...am wondering how much you need to squint for UAE to make it into this list :-0
The amount of global publicity that Goldman Sachs has got out of coining this smart little term, gave quite a few smart alecks an idea to copy and come up with similar acronyms. For Eg; There’s this certain private Equity Fund manager in UAE which kept harping on a 6 letter word and included a whole bunch of disjointed countries from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (you’ve probably guessed the name by now) in every presentation by its management. I mean think about bit, who in the right mind would take them seriously if it includes on one side a country which just had a revolt, another country which had the biggest floods history has ever seen and 20 others. Well so much for that superpower economic bloc term and its creators.
My guess is that the guys at Goldman Sachs would be thinking even harder than last time around since they have to live up to the success of BRIC. My take is that they’d call it The MIST Economies (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey), but we’ll have to wait till the end of the month to know that.
Well here’s wishing the good folks at Goldman Sachs all the very best with their second four letter word creation.
What’s in a name…well sometimes everything? What say?
