In Print

The Gatekeeper

April 16, 2021

Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics and the Fight for a Better Future by Paul Krugman. Norton, 444 pp., £13.99, February, 978 0 393 54132 8 Paul Krugman’s latest collection of essays, Arguing with Zombies, first appeared in January 2020. Not only was it quickly buried by Covid, but he missed out on a thing all too rare for a pundit: the opportunity to declare victory. A year later, in Joe Biden’s Washington, Krugmanism rules. The gigantic scale of the $1.9 trillion Biden rescue plan, and now the proposed $2 trillion infrastructure investment programme, are testament to a rearrangement of the relationship between economic expertise and politics in the Democratic Party, a rearrangement which Krugman anticipated and for which Arguing with Zombies makes a powerful case. In the 1990s the lines were clearly drawn. The Democrats were a party of fiscal rectitude and trade globalisation. They had the weight of academic economic

Janet Yellen and Mario Draghi Have One Last Job

April 2, 2021

The U.S. treasury secretary and the Italian prime minister have spent decades shaping this economy. But can they control what comes next? In recent years, the world has been regaled with stories about the crisis of expertise. The era of the liberal technocrat was over, we were told, killed off by the financial crisis and populism. But if democracies find it hard to live with expertise, it seems they can’t live without it either. At the start of 2021, two of the most contentious capitalist democracies in the world, Italy and the United States, turned to familiar experts to chart a way out of novel political situations. If there is such a thing as a technocrat, Janet Yellen, the new U.S. treasury secretary, and Mario Draghi, Italy’s new prime minister, are it. For the last 30 years, both Yellen and Draghi have held positions of

The Fragility of Europe’s China Strategy

March 30, 2021

In its dealings with Beijing, the United States has turned to classic grand strategy with the aim of safeguarding its primacy. In contrast, the EU has been pursuing a less consistent, but much more suitable multi-track approach. China’s latest actions may push the Europeans to full alignments with the US—which would be both momentous and dangerous. In the spring of 2021, the triangle of EU-US-China relations has taken on a

The Green New Deal’s time has come – but what’s happened to Labour’s radicalism?

March 11, 2021

The party risks a dead end with its ‘Little Britain’ thinking, in marked contrast to the bolder path taken by Joe Biden What a difference power makes. The past 18 months saw political defeats for the left on both sides of the Atlantic. Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party came to an end after a resounding Conservative victory. The Bernie Sanders campaign went down at the hands of the

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Auf Deutsch

Britain

Central Banking

China

Climate Political Economy

COVID

Critical theory

Debt Politics

Democracy

Europe

Europe’s Political Economy

Germany

Global Political Economy

History

USA

Archive

Biden’s Stimulus Is the Dawn of a New Economic Era

March 5, 2021

The United States’ massive relief package is more than a technocratic policy. It’s a democratic triumph. There is a lot of debate right now about the meaning of U.S. democratic leadership on the world stage.

The Rise and Fall and Rise (and Fall) of the U.S. Financial Empire

January 15, 2021

The dollar is dead. Long live the dollar. If 2020 confirmed one thing, it was the centrality of the dollar to the global economy. U.S. hegemony may already have passed us in a political and strategic sense,

Talk of a global economic reset must not ignore grim realities

December 20, 2020

Scientists may have provided us with a miraculous fix for Covid, but history shows that any path to recovery will be long. Read the full article at the Financial Times

After Escape: The New Climate Power Politics

December 11, 2020

The vista painted for us by Bruno Latour, Eva Lin, and Martin Guinard in their concept for the Taipei Biennial 2020 is alarming: “We are witnessing a massive extension of conflicts and an extreme brutalization

Light in the tunnel or oncoming train?

November 30, 2020

In the final weeks of 2020 an optimist might see light at the end of the tunnel. Europe was hit hard by the second wave of Covid-19. But it is being brought under control. Several

Global Inequality and the Corona Shock

November 27, 2020

In the first half of 2020, as the world economy shut down, hundreds of millions of people across the world lost their jobs. Following India’s lockdown on March 24, 10s of millions of displaced migrant

Biden will have the presidency. But Republicans still have the power

November 24, 2020

With a slim majority in Congress, the president-elect lacks a solid base. The past teaches us what may happen. President Trump’s efforts to overturn the outcome of the 3 November election, which appear to be

The West’s Constitutional Crises Threaten the Economy’s Last Best Hope

November 21, 2020

Central banks have kept their economies afloat this year—but political dysfunction is pushing them past the breaking point. In the looking-glass moment of November 2020 we should perhaps no longer be surprised to see the

The Limits of Victory

November 9, 2020

Joe Biden may have won the election, but the U.S. is still divided and the Republicans are ready to block his every move, even as the country faces grave crises. On Sat., Nov. 7, 2020,

America’s Economy Is Fragile. So Is Biden’s Economic Team.

November 9, 2020

As the transition to the next administration under Joe Biden begins, several lists of potential economics team members are already in circulation. Longtime Biden advisors Jared Bernstein and Ben Harris are in the frame. So

Trump has not been repudiated – a Biden presidency would face obstruction at every level

November 5, 2020

With progress blocked, the US election could entrench the poisonous status quo Whatever else emerges from the US’s 2020 election, one thing is clear: it has not delivered a comprehensive repudiation of Donald Trump. The

Welcome to the Worst Election Outcome for the Global Economy

November 4, 2020

As of early morning, Nov. 4, the presidential betting market is back where it was 24 hours ago. As was true before the polls closed and the counting began, as of 7 a.m. on Nov.4

The Markets Want Much More Than Just a Biden Win

November 3, 2020

As we await the outcome of the U.S. election, the world economy drifts listlessly, paralyzed by the shock of COVID-19 and geopolitical and political uncertainty. As Gita Gopinath, the chief economist of the International Monetary

The political economy of Trump

November 3, 2020

The United States can protect itself against turbulence, but doing so against a great recession is a lot more difficult, and that is the danger if the Democrats get to the White House but fail

Whatever happens, it will take more than promises to Make America Normal Again

November 1, 2020

The forces Trump represents and the fragility of the country’s electoral machinery are problems decades in the making. As we approach 3 November, it seems that the whole world is holding its breath. No other