The editor of World Financial Markets, the monthly newsletter, is Rimmer de Vries, 51, the most respected private forecaster of world currency exchange rates and trade flows.

Over the next five years OPEC’s petro powers will drain as much as $570 billion from the world’s oil-thirsty economies. Hardest hit will be the less developed countries. With their credit lines stretched to the snapping point, the LDCs may need $70 billion more than international banks are like ly…