US President Joseph Biden gave his annual State of the Union speech to Congress. This was his energetic bid for re-election in the 2024 Presidential elections against his predecessor, Donald J Trump, allaying concerns about his age and physical prowess and to show how America is strong, with a call to continue supporting Ukraine. Sixty-two per cent of Americans surveyed after the speech felt positive rather than negative. Ten days later, Vladimir Putin, mentioned six times in Biden’s speech and likened to Hitler, was re-elected as Russian President with 88 per cent of the vote.

The state of global order is less union, but more disunion or polarization – one indicator being the price of gold rising to over US$2,222 per ounce, an all-time high. A higher gold price means weaker dollar in real terms. At the same time, the Dow, S&P500 and Nasdaq stock market indicators also touched record highs, following hints from Fed Chairman Jay Powell that Fed interest rates may be peaking with possible cuts later this year. On that note, the US certainly feels it never had it so good.

The total market cap of US stocks increased by $10.2 trillion in 2023. Arising from the Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom, Nvidia alone added $1 trillion to its investors’ wealth since last year. In the fourth quarter of 2023, the US economy grew at an above-trend pace of 3.2 per cent per year. In contrast, the January 2024 World Bank forecast indicated the slowest global growth pace in the last 30 years: “Global growth is expected to slow for a third year in a row – to 2.4 per cent – far below the 3.1 per cent average of the 2010s.”

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In other words, the biggest economy in the world is growing faster than........

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