This blog is posted in conjunction with our Global Review podcast, just released.

There was an earthquake in Chile recently. There was another earthquake, at least in a metaphorical sense, a little to the north, as Forbes magazine announced the identity of the world’s richest man.

He is, predictably, an American – but what may surprise some is that he is from Latin America, not the United States.

The Mexican telecom king Carlos Slim is officially richer than Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or any of the surviving Wall Street “Masters of the Universe”.

Of course, the word “officially” means little in practice. Forbes is probably as reliable as it is possible to get, but none of these “rich lists” is really accurate. They tend to overestimate assets and underestimate liabilities. Land and shareholdings are usually matters of public record, but the loans used to buy them or secured on them are not. The lists also tend to value both land and shares at their nominal market price, but the reality is that neither would be likely to get that price if they were sold at short notice. A total dump by a major shareholder who was also one of the founders of a big corporation would have a particularly catastrophic effect on share price.

So the disposable wealth of practically everyone on these lists is a lot less than the lists suggest, and we have no way of saying who could really come up with the most cash if they liquidated everything.

Yet the Forbes list is probably the best indicator we have, and, whether accurate or not, it is of enormous symbolic significance.

The higher levels of the list have traditionally been dominated by men from the United States and Europe – people with a broadly similar cultural and ethnic background.

The 2010 Top Ten shows how that is changing. There are still three each from the United States and Continental Europe, but there are also two Indians and a Brazilian as well as the Mexican at the very top. This is not a reflection of where global wealth is located, but entrepreneurs in counties which have traditionally been looked down on by some in the developed West can take encouragement from this evidence that anything is possible for them.

The recession has seen the rising and falling of many.

Business is coming back – but not necessarily in the places it was before. Many of the big names that went down over the last two years had been living on borrowed time for ages. They are gone for good. Those setting up new businesses are looking for bases that are less taxed, less regulated, and less in thrall to restrictive labour practices.

In this sense, the recession has only accelerated what has been happening for some time. Although Mexico still has major problems – most notably the law and order breakdown caused by the “drug wars” between suppliers of illegal narcotics – the country has also seen major economic development in the last two decades, due in large part to the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA.

Carlos Slim’s success is more than just the triumph of an entrepreneur. It is a sign of the times – one more example of the major shift in economic power that has been underway for some time and which is now too visible to ignore.