The  WB expects the global economy to contract for the first time since WWII in 2009 and world trade is to decline to the lowest level in 80 years.

A trade dispute  has just exploded between Washington and Beijing following the imposition of tariffs on Chinese tires imported into the US.

China’s internet community has gone viral on the topic. And many in the West are thinking. “Isn’t this type of reaction a bit out of date? Given China’s economic power, if they want to sell tires in another country, they can just go ahead and buy a tire manufacturer there. The West has enough broke businesses.”

With the G20 summit opening tomorrow in Pittsburgh, people are wondering what kind of world the aftermath of the financial crisis is likely to produce in the years to come.

The tendency, as we have seen, is to go tribal.

Forbes  is heralding the end of Thomas Friedman’s  ”Flat World” and the beginning of a new “era of decreasing trade”.

I can’t help sensing a strong feeling of hysteria around the whole thing.

Yes, the world is changing. May be much faster than Friedman or anybody else had predicted. But the answer is not to find refuge in protectionism.

Times call for much more creative solutions. Let’s see what comes out of  tomorrow and Friday.

Whenever I tell people than my mentor was a city not a person, I get funny looks.

From now on, I will be able to use the speech Obama gave last weekend in Prague to prove that I am right.

I was amazed that the US president and his speechwriter understood it so well … that feeling that makes Prague a very special experience:

“For over 1,000 years Prague has set itself apart from any other city or any other place. You have known war and peace. You have seen empires rise and fall. Through it all, the people of Prague have persisted in pursuing their own path and defining their own destiny”.

That’s exactly how it is. I don’t know how it works.

But after you have lived in Prague for a number of years, you get this feeling that, no matter what comes at you, you will always make it.

It is like an aura surrounding you (I don’t know how else to describe it). And you know you will always be able to face any audience or any vicious committee meeting because of this certainty that has come down to you.

Does it happen by osmosis? Do you get it by walking through the streets of the Old Town at night as I loved to do?

I don’t know but I was certainly thrilled to hear Obama call Prague the “golden city which is both ancient and youthful and stands as a living monument to an unconquerable spirit”.