Ihre Welt

Global perspectives, from Franklin Templeton Investments.

International businesspeople discuss pressing matters on the streets. Lift off, zooming out from Street View up into the sky. Big Ben stands squarely at the end of city block. The Crystler Building appears in the distance, with the Transamerica Pyramid just a short walk away. A helicopter view at the crown of Swiss Re, which overlooks the Sydney Opera House. Both the Pearl Orient TV Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center tucked into different parts of the city.

Elevating past a teleconference in a glazed meeting room (Hong Kong, Mumbai, and Sao Paulo on the screens) reveals the twin Petronas Towers, Taipei 101, the Burj Khalifa, followed by the Sears Tower. Up into the clouds, here is Bank of China, then the Burj al Arab (across the inlet from downtown).

All these, with the low-rise of Manhattan, San Francisco, and other cities filled in at their ankles, laid out on what I'm fairly confident began as a satellite image of Vancouver, carved into the face of Benjamin Franklin. A Canadian city, transformed, like Nakeel's World Archipelago in Dubai, into the visage of an American founding father, and sprinkled with the towers of the planet's financial centers.

This is their world.