The Senseless Club BRIC

The leaders of the BRIC countries -- Brazil, Russia, India, and China -- hold their first stand-alone summit in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on Tuesday, June 16. One can easily picture Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill, who invented the "BRIC" term in 2001, grinning at Chinese President Hu Jintao's elbow and scribbling notes for an updated version of Present at the Creation, former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson's memoir of the shaping of the Cold War-era global order.
 
The timing of the BRIC summit, just a few weeks before U.S. President Barack Obama's arrival in Moscow and the G-8 meeting in L'Aquila, Italy, is hardly accidental. The event caps months of high-profile -- and largely constructive -- policy moves and statements by BRIC officials who have demonstrated that the commanding heights of the global economy are no longer the sole province of the so-called G-3: the United States, the European Union, and Japan.