Just before the sub-prime crisis broke in August 2007, an op-ed piece by David Hale in the Wall Street Journal boldly asserted that never in the history of the world has the human race enjoyed such material prosperity. The facts back him up. With a record population of 6.6 billion and an average per capita income of $10,200 in 2006, the world's gross domestic product was still growing at over 5 percent annually in real terms and thus at 2–4 percent per capita. Never has there been so many people living and never has their per capita income been so high. Moreover, never before have there been such bright prospects for the future. Driving this phenomenal achievement, most economists agree, is the rise of trade, starting with the industrialized West after World War II, including the oil producing countries in the 1970s, and finally encompassing the centrally-planned economies of China, India, and the former Soviet Union in the 1990s. Despite occasional tremors in the stock markets of the world, the global economy is awash in liquidity as a result of the unprecedented breadth and depth of prosperity, which has generated high profits in all the countries participating in increased trade.

The resulting savings, Hale argued, as have others, are directed by the increasingly efficient financial markets of the world toward their most efficient investment opportunities. Global finance, in short, provides the basis for continued prosperity.