Two for the Road

By Peter Gumbol / Davos

It sounds like a recipe for economic disaster: Oil rpices soared while central banks around the world hiked interest rates. But last year the global economy carried that extra weight and continued to move ahead robustly. The combination of big-spending U.S. consumers and booming Chinese production that feeds the Western appetite for low-priced products resulted in a second consecutive year of worldwide growth of more than 4%. That's the strongest in three decades, and there's more good news to come: the world economy is on track to enjoy another bumper year in 2006 as the twin Chinese-American engine continues to power ahead.