The global financial crisis triggered by the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and its aftermath in the subsequent five years has made visible and telling two new realities of the 21st century. First, the United States and its western allies no longer represent the single canonical example of the economic and political model of a free market democracy that other countries ought to strive to imitate. The crisis was triggered in the United States in part by a failure of monetary and financial regulatory policy; many emerging market economies, including China, India and Brazil, recovered relatively quickly from the global crisis in part due to so-called heterodox policies inconsistent with the U.S. model. Second, the global economy is no longer dependent on growth in the traditional western democracies; it is growth in China and other emerging market economies that has fueled the global recovery. For the first time in over 100 years, there is convergence between the per capita incomes of the richest and at least some large developing countries