The older you get, the more likely it is you'll wake up one day and find the world turned upside down. And so it was this morning.

While the world burns, the shadow chancellor hobnobs with a Russian oligarch, and thereby falls out with fellow Bullingdon Club* carouser Nat Rothschild for – sin or sins – being indiscreet (well he did go to St Paul's rather than Eton: what more do you expect from an oik?); the Republicans accuse Obama's ascendant Democrats of rigging the election (does no one remember dimpled chads?); the pound plunges to a five-year low against the dollar, which is now underwritten by Beijing; Mervyn King has used the 'r word' in public, as has the Prime Minister – whose popularity grows by the second; a small group of tribesmen in the hills runs rings around the US war machine; and China is in a space race with India, which has this morning launched an unmanned mission to the moon... to size it up for nuclear fuel.

Just an average day, in other words, in a world where the US has more nationalised institutions than China, and no one can afford to drive to the office.

Anyone harking back to the summer, when one non-forged English pound bought you two faded, crispy dollars, or to 18 months ago, when the US seemed set to rule the world for a second century, would think that generational change has sneaked up and tapped us on the shoulder while we were facing, hand outstretched, in the opposite direction.

But the lesson of all this, of course, is that real change, like real power, is always behind the scenes; it moves unnoticed by all but the few in the know. When it reveals itself, it is because the last edifice to fall is simply the old facade – like the Berlin Wall.

So the question we should all be asking ourselves is: how prepared are we for the real 21st century, which is not going to be a high-speed, broadband re-run of the 20th after all. No, it is going to be the Eastern century, bankrolled and powered by Asia and Eastern Europe, against which the 19th and 20th century Western guard seem woefully ill-prepared (apart from the upper classes, whose blood ties and loyalties have always made geography irrelevant).

Answers on a monogrammed napkin, please.

On the subject of which, I shall be at the NOA Awards tomorrow night, replete with black tie and tux, presenting the award for Outsourcing User of the Year. Gossip, I dare say, will follow.

Toodle pip!

* Previous members include such infamous reprobates as John Profumo, Gottfried von Bismarck, Boris Johnson, Prince Felix Yussopov (co-murderer of Rasputin), and, er Davids Cameron and Dimbleby. Lock up your daughters!