《经济学人》2018年刊封面又暗藏了哪些未来玄机？

全球最严肃、最高端、最具影响力和公信力的政经杂志，《经济学人》每年10月底发行一本预测性的明年特刊（The World in 201x）——台湾叫《全球大趨勢》。

2015年《經濟學人》年刊封面充滿神秘的符號和可怕的預言：

2016年《经济学人》年刊封面也都是各国领袖、重要人物，但大部分头像是黑白的，只有中、俄的脸是彩色的；德国总理默克尔居中，因欧洲难民政策灰头土脸；希拉里将要竞选总统，特朗普还没资格上封面……

Planet Trump：2017年《经济学人》年刊用八张塔罗牌预言，这将会是一个被特朗普当选美国总统严重影响的混乱世界。

2018年《经济学人》年刊封面充满了63个简洁、清新、表情包式的政经/科技/文化/区域等符号，有点像Monocle的网络化风格。

火箭、吉他、摄影机、世界杯、特朗普、金胖、自由女神、wifi、共享单车、艾菲尔铁塔、新能源汽车、咖啡、耳机、雨伞、呵呵……

你还认出了哪几个符号以及它们的寓意？

The World in 2018 will build on three decades of publishing success: this will be the 32nd edition.The World in 2018 will be specific, numerate and opinionated: full of predictions, and a good read. The Economist’s writers will be joined by distinguished editors and columnists from other publications: leaders from business, politics, science and the arts will also add their ideas for 2018. It will look ahead to a World Cup in Russia, mid-term elections in America, tourists taken around the moon, plenty of poignant anniversaries—100 years since the Armistice ended fighting on the Western Front, 50 years since the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, 10 years of Apple’s App Store—and a host of powerful ideas about the future, not least driven by technology: it will be a big year for drones and geoengineering. Beyond the print edition there will be full digital and audio editions, a range of 2018-themed videos, an Economist Radio series and high-profile events in Asia, Europe and America.

http://www.theworldin.com/

The World in 2018 from The Economist highlights key global themes to watch for next year

the annual look ahead is in its third decade of explaining the political, economic and cultural forces that will shape our world in the coming year

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-world-in-2018-from-the-economist-highlights-key-global-themes-to-watch-for-next-year-300558659.html

LONDON, Nov. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The World in 2018, the annual publication from The Economist, predicts that 2018 will be a nerve-jangling year as people across the world attempt to escape the tensions of politics and the frenzies of technology.  But the world can also look forward to an economy growing at a respectable pace and the distraction of global events including the Winter Olympics and the World Cup.

Daniel Franklin, editor of The World in 2018, said: "It will be a critical year on many fronts, including North Korea's nuclear challenge, the Brexit negotiations, China's economic reforms and America's mid-term elections as well as the presidential polls in Brazil and Mexico. We will see intriguing battles for influence, ideas and leadership." 

Twelve global themes for 2018 are:

• Trumpism v Macronisme We will see competing open v closed world views. While President Donald Trump focuses on his inward-looking "America first" agenda, France's President Emmanuel Macron promises a new kind of pro-globalisation social contract, one that boosts competition and entrepreneurship while protecting workers who lose out. Mr Macron will emerge as a modern-day equivalent of Teddy Roosevelt, the American president most associated with the Progressive Era.

• Election game-changers: Brazil, Mexico, Italy and the US mid-terms Once every 12 years elections in Latin America's two giants, Brazil and Mexico, coincide; there and in other countries in the region's big election year voters will demand political renewal and an end to corruption. A messy election in Italy could constrain the country's economic recovery. In America, the Democrats could triumph in a close contest for the House of Representatives, opening the way for the possible impeachment of Donald Trump.      

http://www.theworldin.com/edition/2018/article/14389/should-they-stay-or-should-they-go

• The political and economic cocktail of the Winter Olympics in South Korea and the World Cup in Russia Two competitions will capture the world's attention. South Korea will put on the Winter Olympics in the shadow of the North's nuclear brinkmanship. Russia will stage the FIFA World Cup at a sensitive time in the country's relations with the West and shortly after an election that will give Vladimir Putin another term as president. In both events, sport will compete with politics.

• Long good-byes from leaders in Japan, Cuba and Saudi Arabia Japan's Emperor Akihito prepares to bow out, Cuba's President Raúl Castro steps down, Saudi's King Salman may abdicate. But many leaders who have overstayed their welcome (such as Nicolàs Maduro in Venezuela) will try to cling to office.

• 2018年应当下台但不会下台的领导人有委内瑞拉的马杜罗、马来西亚的纳吉-阿都拉萨和阿森纳的温格。            

• Synchronised global economic growth, at last Ten years after the start of the Great Recession, a sense of widespread wellness will begin to take hold in the world economy. To many it may feel as if 2018 is just the beginning of the real recovery, but it may in fact be approaching the end: the world economy tends to tip into a recession every eight to ten years, and the last one ended in 2009. The most likely cause of the next dip? Central banks tightening policy too much, too quickly.

• Crunch time for critical global diplomacy: Brexit, NAFTA and North Korea Fraught Brexit talks will reach a climax in the autumn of 2018, when a divorce settlement between Britain and the European Union needs to be reached if there is to be time for parliaments to ratify it by the scheduled departure date of March 2019; the chances of a no-deal Brexit are high. The year will show whether NAFTA can survive Donald Trump's protectionist push. And – most important of all – Mr Trump will have to decide whether to deter or contain a nuclear North Korea seeking the capability to strike the United States.  

http://www.theworldin.com/edition/2018/article/14598/goodish-times-global-economy

• The march of the acronyms: GDPR, MiFID2, COP24, GNH, Remote ID, 5G, AI New European rules on data (GDPR) and finance (MiFID2, PSD) come into force. A climate-change conference in Poland(COP24) will take stock of progress on the Paris accord. Bhutan starts an intriguing experiment of applying its "gross national happiness" (GNH) to business. And in key tech developments, commercial drones develop faster thanks to rules on remote ID, the next generation of mobile technology (5G) will make its debut at the Winter Olympics and artificial intelligence (AI) will march on into more and more areas.

• The coming "techlash" Politicians will turn on the technology giants—Facebook, Google and Amazon in particular—saddling them with fines, regulation and a tougher interpretation of competition rules, in a 21st-century equivalent of America's antitrust era. There will be broader pressure for transparency about the origin and accuracy of online content. And the tech behemoths' acquisitions will come under greater scrutiny, as antitrust authorities take a harder line on attempts to squash would-be competitors by buying them.

• Asian countries top of the league Asian countries will be world champions in 2018—probably not in football, but in a variety of other areas. Bhutan is forecast to top the league in economic growth; China could overtake Italy to be number one in terms of UNESCO-listed world-heritage sites; and India plans to complete the world's tallest statue, of Vallabhbhai Patel, a founding father of modern India, in Vadodara in the western state of Gujarat.

http://www.theworldin.com/edition/2018/article/14590/biology-childs-play

• Signs of the times, from "peak baby" to new adventures in space and at sea   Telling trends of 2018 will include, in demography, a dip in the number of babies born around the world; the rise of private space ventures reflected most dramatically in SpaceX's plan to send tourists around the Moon; consumers' preference for oversized cars demonstrated in sport utility vehicles and their close cousins overtaking all other types in sales of new vehicles; and the trend towards gigantism at sea shown in the launch of Prelude FLNG, the world's biggest vessel, displacing as much water as six aircraft carriers.

• A new era for medicine Medical historians of the future will describe 2018 as the year that "advanced" medicines—therapies working upstream on DNA—started to become a reality. The most important landmark will be the approval of the world's first RNA interference drug, heralding the arrival of a new class of drug. Advances will also come in gene therapies and gene-editing. With luck, too, an old era will end, with the final eradication of polio.

• Word of the year: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious  "Mary Poppins Returns", starring Emily Blunt, will come out in 2018, timed to coincide with the centenary of women's suffrage in Britain. Its fiery suffragette Mrs Banks would no doubt cheer the political progress women have made since 1964 when the original film appeared – and march onwards with the influence women will have on America's mid-terms.

• 关于中国……

https://ukshop.economist.com/products/the-world-in-2018

This year's guest writers in The World in 2018 include: Ruth Davidson, leader of Scottish Conservatives; John McCain, US senator; Alexei Navalny, opposition leader in Russia; Chrystia Freeland, foreign minister of Canada; Tshering Tobgay, prime minister of Bhutan; Yuriko Koike, governor of Tokyo; Hu Shuli, editor in chief, Caixing; Carrie Lam, chief executive of Hong Kong; Binyamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel; Graça Machel and Richard Branson of The Elders; Stella Nyanzi, Ugandan human-rights activist; Bob Iger, CEO of Disney; Kai-Fu Lee, venture capitalist; Feng Zhang, co-inventor of CRISPR; and Rem Koolhaas, architect.

《經濟學人》年刊The World in...主編Daniel Franklin和副主編John Andrews在2012年出过一本书《經濟學人權威預測：2050趨勢巨流》，天下雜誌出版社有中文繁体版。

更神奇的是，30年前，《经济学人》1988年就有一期封面预测2018年的世界。

The Economist: "Get Ready For A World Currency By 2018"

by Tyler Durden

Jul 9, 2017

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-09/economist-get-ready-world-currency-2018

THIRTY years from now, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, and people in many other rich countries, and some relatively poor ones will probably be paying for their shopping with the same currency. Prices will be quoted not in dollars, yen or D-marks but in, let’s say, the phoenix. The phoenix will be favoured by companies and shoppers because it will be more convenient than today’s national currencies, which by then will seem a quaint cause of much disruption to economic life in the last twentieth century.

-

At the beginning of 1988 this appears an outlandish prediction. Proposals for eventual monetary union proliferated five and ten years ago, but they hardly envisaged the setbacks of 1987. The governments of the big economies tried to move an inch or two towards a more managed system of exchange rates – a logical preliminary, it might seem, to radical monetary reform. For lack of co-operation in their underlying economic policies they bungled it horribly, and provoked the rise in interest rates that brought on the stock market crash of October. These events have chastened exchange-rate reformers. The market crash taught them that the pretence of policy co-operation can be worse than nothing, and that until real co-operation is feasible (i.e., until governments surrender some economic sovereignty) further attempts to peg currencies will flounder.

…

The new world economy

The biggest change in the world economy since the early 1970’s is that flows of money have replaced trade in goods as the force that drives exchange rates. as a result of the relentless integration of the world’s financial markets, differences in national economic policies can disturb interest rates (or expectations of future interest rates) only slightly, yet still call forth huge transfers of financial assets from one country to another. These transfers swamp the flow of trade revenues in their effect on the demand and supply for different currencies, and hence in their effect on exchange rates. As telecommunications technology continues to advance, these transactions will be cheaper and faster still. With unco-ordinated economic policies, currencies can get only more volatile.

…

In all these ways national economic boundaries are slowly dissolving. As the trend continues, the appeal of a currency union across at least the main industrial countries will seem irresistible to everybody except foreign-exchange traders and governments. In the phoenix zone, economic adjustment to shifts in relative prices would happen smoothly and automatically, rather as it does today between different regions within large economies (a brief on pages 74-75 explains how.) The absence of all currency risk would spur trade, investment and employment.

–

The phoenix zone would impose tight constraints on national governments. There would be no such thing, for instance, as a national monetary policy. The world phoenix supply would be fixed by a new central bank, descended perhaps from the IMF. The world inflation rate – and hence, within narrow margins, each national inflation rate- would be in its charge. Each country could use taxes and public spending to offset temporary falls in demand, but it would have to borrow rather than print money to finance its budget deficit. With no recourse to the inflation tax, governments and their creditors would be forced to judge their borrowing and lending plans more carefully than they do today. This means a big loss of economic sovereignty, but the trends that make the phoenix so appealing are taking that sovereignty away in any case. Even in a world of more-or-less floating exchange rates, individual governments have seen their policy independence checked by an unfriendly outside world.

–

As the next century approaches, the natural forces that are pushing the world towards economic integration will offer governments a broad choice. They can go with the flow, or they can build barricades. Preparing the way for the phoenix will mean fewer pretended agreements on policy and more real ones. It will mean allowing and then actively promoting the private-sector use of an international money alongside existing national monies. That would let people vote with their wallets for the eventual move to full currency union. The phoenix would probably start as a cocktail of national currencies, just as the Special Drawing Right is today. In time, though, its value against national currencies would cease to matter, because people would choose it for its convenience and the stability of its purchasing power.

…

The alternative – to preserve policymaking autonomy- would involve a new proliferation of truly draconian controls on trade and capital flows. This course offers governments a splendid time. They could manage exchange-rate movements, deploy monetary and fiscal policy without inhibition, and tackle the resulting bursts of inflation with prices and incomes polices. It is a growth-crippling prospect. Pencil in the phoenix for around 2018, and welcome it when it comes.