While the world debates the future of its financial system, global rebalancing or even power shifts along five dimensions are quietly appearing. Their implications are profound and may well lead to a more stable world.

The first is a rebalancing of moral authority due to the receding moral superiority of the west. The system they touted as superior has failed. Why should developing countries blindly follow its model now? Remember the moral high ground that western leaders took during the Asian financial crisis? Hong Kong was bashed when its government intervened in August 1998 in the stock market to fend off the western investment banks and hedge funds bent on destroying the city's currency.

Yet only a month later, the US government intervened in the market to bail out LTCM, a move that has proved to be the harbinger of the western bail-outs of financial institutions in the past year. Hong Kong's government was not allowed to save its citizens, yet by a double standard the US could save its companies.