The number of poor will drop from a billion to less than five million.

Instead, the Greek economy will shrink by 6 .

Greece s economy would contract even further, and its creditors would have to accept even larger write offs.

The proportion of elderly doubles, and the working age population halves.

Moreover, as Japan s society ages, the household savings rate will decrease dramatically.

Most demographers expect Russia s population to shrink significantly over the coming decades.

In 2009, economists expect growth to contract by up to 8 , with a further steep decline likely next year.

GDP in the advanced economies is expected to shrink about 4 this year.

Within the developed world, however, Europe s population is expected to decline markedly.

Russia s population, currently 145.5m, is expected to fall to 104.5m Ukraine s population is projected to fall from nearly 50m to 30m, a startling drop of 40 .

But, starting in 2010, the imbalances returned, and, according to the International Monetary Fund s recently released World Economic Outlook, they will not shrink between now and 2016.

In principle, the financial industry can become smaller by having each institution contract proportionately, say, by 15 . But this is not the typical pattern in any industry.

In principle, the financial industry can become smaller by having each institution contract proportionately, say, by 15 .

CAMBRIDGE The world economy will shrink this year for the first time since 1945, and some economists worry that the current crisis could spell the beginning of the end of globalization.

As the advanced economies recover, however weakly, the growth differential is likely to narrow again, perhaps to about two percentage points, which still implies steady convergence at a decent pace.

Most analysts forecast that GDP will contract in the first half of 2008 and recover in the second half of the year.

The United Nations estimates that average life expectancy will reach 75 years by the middle of the century, and that the proportion of those going hungry will drop below 4 .

Even sharper declines are expected in the candidate countries of Central and Eastern Europe, from a total of 105m to 85m, a fall of 20m, or about 20 .

There are now over 120,000 living on under 40 cents a day, an amount soon to be halved.

In Germany, for example, where 20 of the population is older than 65, the number of working age adults will shrink from about 50 million today to as few as 34 million by 2060.

In reality, it is Sea Shepard who will be most damaged by the ICJ ruling. If Japan stops the research driven whaling, they won't be able to continue campaigning against whaling to justify their existence to their audience, and will then lose donations to fund their activities.

The World Bank projects by 2011, it will be under 20 million, which is a reduction of 95 percent.

Even assuming a steady inflow of immigrants, the combined workforces of the 28 European Union countries are projected to shrink by 12 16 million people over the next 15 years, according to the OECD and the European Commission.

Indeed, the economy is expected to have shrunk by another 2.6 year on year in the second quarter, with growth set to resume only in July September.

But even if tariffs and quotas are progressively reduced, trade flows may remain low if other trade costs remain high.

This also implies that if Greece could escape from its current recession, its national debt would decline, both absolutely and as a share of GDP.

Argentine leaders were repeatedly warned that keeping the exchange rate constant and fixing the peso's value against the US dollar risked sending the economy into recession if the dollar gained value. Argentine politicians were also warned that their peso policy could not be sustained unless the ratio of national debt to GDP was falling.

The International Monetary Fund s latest forecast predicts that the world s advanced economies will contract 0.3 in 2009 the first such shrinkage since the end of World War II.

It remains to be seen whether these attitudes will persist in their current form, and whether the transatlantic divide widens or narrows.

Argentine politicians were also warned that their peso policy could not be sustained unless the ratio of national debt to GDP was falling.

The International Monetary Fund s latest forecast predicts that the world s advanced economies will contract 0.3 in 2009 the first such shrinkage since the end of World War II.

Indeed, the economy is expected to have shrunk by another 2.6 year on year in the second quarter, with growth set to resume only in July September.

If that weren't tough enough, plenty of people are keen to see the BBC cut down in size its power, its finances and its status overhauled.

Japan's total population is projected to shrink by around 30 by 2055 as the number of births falls to 40 of the 2005 level.

Moreover, the strategic balance to Europe s east will also be transformed, because the populations of Russia and the Ukraine are expected to decline even more steeply than those of the EU.

We are now back to the more usual situation where war is financed by government debt, which burdens future generations unless it is eroded by inflation.

The country s GDP contracted by 6.8 last year, and is forecast to shrink by another 9 this year a total loss of roughly 16 over two years.

In other words, the market is betting that the dollar will fall gradually in the next five years, and that the US current account deficit will narrow without a financial crisis.

Driven largely by collapsing domestic demand and production levels, but also by a shortage of affordable trade finance, trade volumes will fall by more than 10 this year.

Will they be reduced to nothing more than a tourist attraction, peddling cheap mementos of what a once great culture?

Are the Tibetans doomed to go the way of the American Indians? Will they be reduced to nothing more than a tourist attraction, peddling cheap mementos of what a once great culture?

Either way, the Chinese trade surplus is bound to shrink, but it would be much better for China if that happened as a result of rising living standards rather than global economic decline.

Japan's population, for example, is projected to decline by 17.9 million by 2050, while the share of its 60 population will climb to 42 , and the share of its 80 population will exceed 10 .

The population of Germany will decline from 82m to just under 71m, that of Italy from 57.5m to 43m, and that of Spain from nearly 40m to just over 31m. all in all, the population of the EU 15 will decline from 376m to 339.3m, a fall of 37m or 10 .

In fact, the federal deficit as a share of GDP will shrink significantly over the next several years, even without further deficit reduction measures, before rising to unsustainable levels by 2030.