Welcome: a new blog, in an epic economic era

The world is in an era of epic economics. So huge are the challenges, they will define domestic politics for years. Forget about the right answers, politicians are only just beginning to come up with the right questions.

And in this strange new world there often is no right answer. The international aspects of the crunch are becoming matters of diplomacy. The credit crisis is intertwined with a fitful dispersion of financial muscle to the world’s new industrial powers from what you might call the highly indebted rich countries.

In the past year I have eyeballed the Icelandic central bank governor who told me “your money is safe with us”, seen foreign oil companies pumping crude out of Iraq for the first time in over three decades, sailed into a massive parking lot of laid-up tankers and container ships off Singapore, and reported from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on the days the entire financial system seemed to be collapsing.

This is a privileged perch from which to be watching the world economy. I get to interview bank chief executives, chancellors, and occasionally the Bank of England governor.

Anyone who feels a little bewildered by events over the past year should feel reassured that bewilderment can be detected at all levels of economic decision-making.

I hope to get the audience of this micro-tome involved in setting the agenda for our output. I know there’s a surging interest in real-life economics.

The Economist‘s circulation is well up; I’m told that universities are being besieged with application to study economics. Certainly, academic economists such as Nouriel Roubini, Willem Buiter and Robert Shiller have been a much better fountain of prescience than the City or Wall Street, the treasuries of the world, or indeed the financial media.

An epic economic era requires an equally epic response, so please get involved.

– Read two of Faisal’s previous posts on the World News Blog: Jim Rogers told me to become a farmer; is he right? and China and America: a dim sum?