The consultants McKinsey has returned to one of the business and economic issues of our age, the massive debts of the rich developed countries that borrowed excessively to fuel growth in the boom years.
Russia has been touting its proposal to produce nuclear fuel for Iran as a way of defusing Western worries that oil-rich Tehran is secretly developing an atomic weapons program.
And the Morales decision follows a trend by oil and gas-rich Latin American nations seeking a larger share of the profits from fossil fuel extractions, and exerting greater control over the energy sector.
This is a budget which, far from investing in future growth or helping the poor, favours the rich with cuts in capital-gains and inheritance taxes: devices likely to fuel the already giddy stockmarket and to bring the country just what it needs least, a consumer-spending boom.
Many of these nations are rich in natural resources and commodities which will become very important in the next decade as the fuel of economic growth.