A DAVID BROOKS no le gusta dar buenas noticias porque parece que sólo los catastrofistas tienen la profundidad intelectual necesaria para que a uno le tomen en serio, pero aún así lo hace (lo que demuestra dónde está realmente esa profundidad): estamos, dice Brooks, al final del décimoprimer mes (onceavo pa'los de la LOGSE) del año más próspero de la historia de la Humanidad:

Last week, the World Bank released a report showing that global growth "accelerated sharply" this year to a rate of about 4 percent.

Best of all, the poorer nations are leading the way. Some rich countries, like the U.S. and Japan, are doing well, but the developing world is leading this economic surge. Developing countries are seeing their economies expand by 6.1 percent this year - an unprecedented rate - and, even if you take China, India and Russia out of the equation, developing world growth is still around 5 percent. As even the cautious folks at the World Bank note, all developing regions are growing faster this decade than they did in the 1980's and 90's.

This is having a wonderful effect on world poverty, because when regions grow, that growth is shared up and down the income ladder. In its report, the World Bank notes that economic growth is producing a "spectacular" decline in poverty in East and South Asia. In 1990, there were roughly 472 million people in the East Asia and Pacific region living on less than $1 a day. By 2001, there were 271 million living in extreme poverty, and by 2015, at current projections, there will only be 19 million people living under those conditions.

No todo son buenas noticias: sigue habiendo una zona dramáticamente olvidada, el África negra. La solución para ésta es la misma que ha conseguido ese desarrollo del que habla Brooks: la globalización.

Just once, I'd like to see someone like Bono or Bruce Springsteen stand up at a concert and speak the truth to his fan base: that the world is complicated and there are no free lunches. But if you really want to reduce world poverty, you should be cheering on those guys in pinstripe suits at the free-trade negotiations and those investors jetting around the world. Thanks, in part, to them, we are making progress against poverty. Thanks, in part, to them, more people around the world have something to be thankful for.

Y antes de este último párrafo, menciona nada más y nada menos que a Xavier Sala-i-Martín. Es decir, un artículo redondo.