Chimerica" is a term used to describe the closely interlocked economies of China and the United States. This term is a combination of "China" and "America," and it plays on the word "chimera," the mixed-species monster of Greek myth. The term was created by economists Moritz Schularick and Niall Ferguson to refer to the unique symbiosis between the two economies from 1996 to 2006. During that time, the economies of China and the U.S. became so intertwined and mutually reliant that Schularick and Ferguson found it useful to treat the two nations as two sectors in a single enormous economy.