Financial activity was concentrated largely in what the Europeans termed “Anglo-Saxon” economies: above all the United States and the United Kingdom, and a few small countries that tried, disastrously, to replicate a model of free-for-all finance such as Iceland and Ireland. But the emerging markets that drive globalization in the early twenty-first century have a similar mix of export orientation and a prominent industrial base of small and medium-sized and frequently family-owned enterprises.  They have the problem today of trying to reconcile dynamic growth and social cohesion that was the problem of Germany in the past, and to which the German social model was and is held up as the answer.
Mais les marchés émergents qui motivent la mondialisation au début du XXIe siècle répondent à un dosage similaire d'orientation vers l’exportation et de base industrielle saillante de PME souvent familiales. Ces marchés doivent aujourd'hui réconcilier la croissance dynamique et la cohésion sociale, problème qui fut autrefois celui de l'Allemagne et pour lequel le modèle social allemand était et est présenté comme la solution.