This study is the outcome of empirical research on the development and decay tendencies of the capitalist world economy since the early 1980s and the role that Europe will play in these constellations. Over these years the conclusion was reached that the logic of capitalist world development changes with the ups and downs of longer Kondratieff cycles, and that different periods of hegemony and of world political constellations, connected with these Kondratieff cycles, in turn give rise to different constellations of world economic ascent and decline. Those that hoped that world trade and open financial markets would shift incomes in favour of the poor, must now recognise that -- however we look at the figures -- there is a tendency towards rising poverty on a global scale, especially after the Asian crash of 1997.