Few financial ideas have caught on as quickly as the “BRICs,” which stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China, today’s “Big Four” fast-growing economies. Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill coined the phrase in 2003, and it has now come into widespread use as a symbol of a shift in global economic power away from the developed G7 economies and toward the developing world.

By dint of their sheer size and population, and their collective resolve to maintain their own particular brand of capitalism, the BRICs are the economic way forward for the world. Together, the BRICs include more than 25% of the world’s land mass and 40% of the world’s population. And thanks to their projected rapid growth by 2050, the BRICs will likely cover the combined economies of the world’s richest nations today. China and India will become the world’s leading suppliers of manufactured goods and services. Brazil, together with Russia, will be the main suppliers of raw materials in the world. The BRICs already account for a combined GDP of $15.435 trillion on a purchasing power basis. By that measure they are already as a group better than the United States.

This is what Goldman Sachs had to reveal in its original report “Dreaming with BRICS: The Path to 2050”, published in 2003.

* China’s financial system will beat Germany in the next few years, Japan in 2015 and the United States in 2041.

* India’s speed of development will be the highest, not China’s, and will surpass Japan (now the world’s second largest economy) by 2032.

* BRIC currencies may rise in price by 300% over the next 50 years as it is a huge tailwind for investors in BRIC assets.

* Taken together, the BRICs could be larger than the United States and the developed economies of Europe in 40 years.

* By 2025, the BRICs will bring another 200 million people with incomes of more than $15,000 into the world economy. That’s equal to the combined populations of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.

If anything, Goldman Sachs has become more confident in the BRICs because it released its main report. The size of China’s financial system will surpass Germany’s economy in 2008, a year ahead of projections, and it will surpass Japan’s in 2010. Goldman Sachs now believes that China’s economy will surpass that of the United States by 2027. And with India Representing 10 of the thirty fastest-growing urban areas in the world and 700 million people moving to cities by 2050, its impact on the world economy may be greater and faster than implied in 2003.

The BRIC countries have entered the world economic phase that has a renewed confidence. Shanghai, host of the World Expo in 2010, highlights its goal to become a global financial center by 2020, investing double what its rival Beijing did while hosting the 2008 Olympics. infrastructure because it will host the World Cup in 2014 and then the Olympic Games in 2016. Two of the world’s top five on the Forbes Rich list are from India. (The main one is from Mexico). As of 2010, Moscow has the next highest number of billionaires in the world after New York City.

Here’s why you’ll expect the role of the BRICs to continue. First, for the first time in recent memory, the BRICs are growing not by borrowing but by investing. China has the highest savings rate in the world. Brazil and Russia both have huge foreign exchange reserves, thanks to windfalls from oil earnings. Even happy-go-lucky Brazil is showing never-before-seen discipline by running a financial surplus.

Next, skyrocketing commodity prices have put more money in the pockets of the BRICs than ever before. Which means a lot less risk of a financial collapse like the one Brazil and Russia had in the 1980s and 1990s.

Finally, higher credit ratings mean that the BRICs can now issue debt in their currencies. A decade after the default, Russia has a higher credit rating than the European Union economies of Greece and Portugal. The result? More stable financial growth and investment financing that both depend on the whims of foreign investors.

However, here is a reality check. Despite their recent high profile, the BRICs have to do a lot right to copy the success of Japan, Germany and South Korea. Potential problems include China’s oppressive regime, India’s stifling bureaucracy, Brazil’s history of political change, and Russia’s mafia capitalism.

So yes, the BRIC economies together are already coming in at about 15% better than the US. Take the financial affirmative action out of purchasing power parity, though, and look at wealth in real terms, just as the US GDP ($14 trillion) is nearly 40% larger than the four BRICs combined ($14 trillion). 8.6 trillion). Using real GDP, the average United States is nearly 15 times richer than its BRIC counterpart. In fact, 2.6 billion citizens in total can be found in the BRICs with only 308 million Americans. And regardless of the nation’s billionaires, more than 200 million Indians live on less than $2 a day.

And the historical prediction is known as the cup game. The year 1900 had its own version of the BRICs: Argentina, Russia, Austria-Hungary and the United States were the fastest growing economies on earth. Investors were clamoring to buy Russian rail bonds for the same reasons they are investing in Chinese solar stocks today. What was the world like in 1950? Two world wars and several revolutions later, Austria-Hungary and Russia didn’t even exist; Argentina went from being an economic bull to a basket case, and the United States was also a world superpower, responsible for 50% of the world’s economic production.

Despite the caveats, the BRIC countries today offer some of the most exciting investment opportunities on the planet. It is possible to make more money in a month investing in BRIC stocks than you can in S&P for 3 years. Brazil’s stock market, the Bovespa, went from around 9,000 in September 2002 to over 70,000 in May 2008. Savvy investors in Russia made more than 60 times their money between the September 1998 crash and the peak. from the market in May 2007.

And today, it may be less complicated than ever to invest in the BRICs. Along with the companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange, 34 are Brazilian, six Russian, eight Indian and 16 Chinese. And that doesn’t include technology businesses that may list on the Nasdaq. There are also some BRIC exchange-traded funds: iShares MSCI BRIC Index (BKF) and SPDR BRIC 40 (BIK).

Buying BRICs may offer you the most exciting and profitable ways to take a position for decades to come.