What will happen if the current-account-surplus runners of the world collectively lose faith in the US bond market? Worst case would be a grand dislocation of the world's current financial order. And the order replacing it would -- unfortunately -- be disorderly.

Last week, I spoke to 35 chairpersons and CEOs at the Chairs' Forum in London, organised by the Financial Times. My chosen topic was "The Changing World Economic Order". I was able to bring together my various strands of thinking -- some previously shared here in Daily Maverick -- into a single overarching thesis.

I was fortunate enough to be able to do a "dry run" on the previous day at a British investment firm managing the wealth of high-net-worth individuals. I regard them as the sharpest knives in the London drawer. Afterwards one of them commented -- and I detected relief in his voice -- that at last someone had cracked the code of the Rosetta Stone of world finance today.

His only proviso was that far from unearthing insights into a bygone civilisation as was the case with Jean-François Champollion's deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics, I was able to explain the status and "values" of an alternate civilisation to today's reigning economic hegemon, a civilisation that is very much alive and whose time at the top may again lie ahead.

The essential summary of my thesis is as follows: We live in a world of finance where two broad...