My thoughts on the process go to natural order of things - the energy & materials per capita ratio. Which means that to have an affluent world you are going to have the average such ratio that gives also sustainability. Look at China's ratio despite its output it is clearly unsustainable because of the size of their population and pollution of its land affecting the poor and new middle class.

My belief is that nanotechnolgy will make the cost of labour irrelevant and so new currency value could be set against the energy-materials per capita ratio, ie populous countries will be poorer because nanotechnology needs essentially only two things energy and materials, not labour.

This is radical I know.

If an equation or theory works for a while everyone is happy, if it stops working it is buried, but years later if it looks like it might be applicable again it is dusted off and given a another run.

I think we can forget all the economic mumbo jumbo because we know until the consumer starts spending again things are unlikely to improve. (and you can probably come up with a few dozen equations to reflect that truism) The question is what will "really" get the consumer spending again? This is probably quite difficult to answer as I suspect is varies depending on income levels,location, age etc.

Any ideas anyone?