DOCSLIB.ORG

The Global Minotaur Pdf

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Global Minotaur Pdf The global minotaur pdf Continue Global Minotaur Written byYannis VaroufakisCountryEnglandLanguageEnglishSubjectEconomicGenren FictionPublished2011 zed BooksMedia typePrint, E-book ISBN978-1-78360-610-8 Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the World Economy is a book by economist and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, first published in 2011 by ze ed books. The third edition was released in July 2015 with an updated subtitle of America, the true causes of the financial crisis and the future of the global economy. The book seeks to explain the origins of the financial crash of 2008 by analogy with the history of the Minotaur from Greek mythology. In particular, he argues that since the 1970s the United States has been a global minotaur, consuming surplus capital from the rest of the world economy and maintaining global economic stability in the process. He argues that the 2008 collapse can be understood as the result of the potentially fatal injury inflicted on the Ministry of Justice as a result of the collapse of the banking system. Yanis Varoufakis's February 2015 summary of the Great Depression, World War 2 and Varoufakis's Global Plan begin with the Great Catastrophe of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed. He argues that Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was not enough to lift America out of recession, and that it was only after World War II and a massive public spending program that it led to this that the United States finally recovered. As soon as the war began to recede, American planners began to worry that the recession would take hold again, and to solve the problem in 1944 they organized the Bretton Woods Conference, a gathering of world leaders that was to define the design of the postwar global economy. While John Maynard Keynes, negotiating on behalf of the UK, proposed an International Monetary Union with incentives to balance world trade, it was rejected by the US in favor of what Varoufakis calls the Global Plan. The U.S. emerged from World War II as the world's major power with a double trade surplus and budget, and therefore rejected Keynes's proposal in favor of an alternative plan that would preserve its hegemony. The Global Plan envisages the creation of a system of fixed exchange rates with the US dollar pegged to gold at a fixed exchange rate of $35 per ounce. The plan also involved the reconstruction of the German and Japanese economies ravaged by war. Early examples were the Marshall Plan in Europe and then the Korean War for Japan. It is important to note that the plan also had a Global Surplus Recycling Mechanism that recycles U.S. surpluses into the rest of the world economy, thereby maintaining global stability while avoiding volatile trade imbalances. The global plan disintegrated around 1971 as a result of spending on the Vietnam War and domestic social programs, the U.S. from nation's deficit nation. The increase in the number of U.S. dollars on the world market led to inflationary pressures and political turbulence, which eventually led to President Nixon announcing in 1971 that the dollar would no longer convert to gold, bringing to an end the Bretton Woods era. As the global plan fell apart, America took on the role of Global Minotaur. America is now a deficit nation with a significant trade and budget deficit, which it was able to maintain through capital inflows from countries with a world surplus on Wall Street. To explain why capital was invested in America in this way, Varoufakis lays out the four charisma minotaurs that forced the world economy to accept America's new role in the global economy. First, the status of the dollar as a world reserve currency, and as a currency in which energy was denominated. Second, the rise in global energy prices due to rising prices led by OPEC has harmed the competitiveness of America's economic competitors. Third, the cheaper U.S. workforce in the 1970s, when corporate profits rose and made U.S. companies attractive to investors. Finally, America's geopolitical power, often in support of American corporations, once again encourages investment. These factors have combined to ensure sufficient capital outflows to America to enable it to maintain its new position as a deficit country, a mission that itself acts as a global mechanism for recycling surpluses. The collapse of 2008 and the future of the global economy, Varoufakis argues that the era of the Global Minotaur ended with the financial crash of 2008. For Varoufakis, the collapse was triggered by Wall Street taking advantage of his position in the global Minotaur era to create colossal sums of private money on the back of his profits in the process of financialization, which then collapsed as it became unsustainable. It is important to note that the collapse injured the Global Minotaur, as America's banking sector could no longer attract enough capital to balance the U.S. double trade and budget deficit. In the wake of the new-found lack of a global surplus recycling mechanism, Varoufakis looks at possible future alternatives in a postscript published in the second edition of the book in 2015. He is considering creating a mechanism similar to that proposed by Keynes at Bretton Woods, but concludes that such a replacement for the Global Minotaur would require the support of America as the most likely global leader. This, however, relies on American politicians to understand the meaning and irreversibility of the demise of the Minotaur. Receiving a review in the Financial Times, Giles Wilkes said his belief that while Varoufakis is guilty of bad history and cherry his basic diagnosis is that the lack of external demand or the mechanism for dispersing costs is responsible for the crisis may be right. Speaking of Varoufakis's valiant but ultimately unsuccessful efforts to fight for global reform as Greece's finance minister, the Evening Standard described the book as an insightful analysis that can still inspire others. Notes : Varoufakis 2015, p.55. Varoufakis 2015, 66-67. Varoufakis 2015, p.60. Varoufakis 2015, p.73. Varoufakis 2015, p.92. Varoufakis 2015, p.99. Varoufakis 2015, p.101-109. Varoufakis 2015, p.222-223. Varoufakis 2015, p.254-256. Wilkes, Giles. Global Minotaur, Yanis Varoufakis. Financial Times. Received on April 3, 2016. Niter, Andrew. Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the World Economy Yanis Varoufakis - review. Evening standard. Received on April 3, 2016. Links to Varoufakis, Yanis (2015). Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the Global Economy (Second Edition), Ze ed Books, extracted from Blog with a good object of searching for a fantastic resource - able to evoke a vaguely remembered link. A few days ago, I realized that I had forgotten the full significance of Nixon's decision in 1971 to sever the link with gold, which was agreed in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference. I remembered that Yanis Varoufakis had written a powerful book about it in 2011 - Global Minotaur America, the true origins of the financial crisis and the future of the Western economy - but it was unavailable in my mountain home. I googled.... to that the whole book is now available for download (just click on the title). Varoufakis is a Greek economist who offers two reasons to expect a poorly written book. ... Economists seem almost genetically incapable of expressing themselves clearly; and English is not its natural language. But the book is a joy to read - not least when it uses Greek mythology to illustrate a point. He clearly had good evidence-readers.... I generally try to keep notes about key books - which are better written in hand than cut and paste (our memory more easily preserves what we take on the work to write out in a long hand). But too often I succumb to the temptation to cut and paste - as now from a very useful summary of the book The subject of the book is very well laid out in the introductory chapter. The author considers six explanations that were proposed in the event of a crisis, but considers them useful but insufficient: (i) the inability to understand the risk; Regulatory capture; (iii) Unstoppable greed; (iv) cultural origin (Anglo-Celtic beliefs in flexible labour markets, etc.); Toxic theory (hypothesis of efficient markets, rational expectations, etc.); (vi) The systemic failure of capitalism, the role of the U.S. country financing its debts and deficits at the expense of the surplus of Germany and Japan. 2, The Laboratory of the Future, provides a brief historical account of the development of capitalism a la Marx, the role of crises, the Goodwin predator prey model, and the role of finance in modern capitalism with the possibility of creating bubbles, and the end of the Gold Standard after the 1929 Great Crash. Chapter 3, the Global Plan, presents a historic report on the Marshall Plan to Save Global Capitalism, the collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement, the end of the U.S. dollar's convertibility to gold in 1971, and the surplus processing mechanism: the absorption of surpluses created in Japan and Germany by the United States. Varoufakis argues that the European Union was a clever U.S. plan to involve Europe in the axis of U.S. economic influence. He ignores the view that the EU was conceived as a third force: to oppose the United States (an opinion strongly supported by Charles de Gaulle) and as a bulwark against communism. Chapter 4 of the Global Minotaur discusses the role of the United States in the global economy. The author argues that the main drawback of the Bretton Woods Agreement (similar to a major flaw in the European Union) was the lack of an automatic global surplus recycling mechanism.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Trade and Development Report 2019
    UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2019 FINANCING A GLOBAL GREEN NEW DEAL ISSUES AT STAKE II A. Introduction The global financial crisis left deep and lasting on an unprecedented scale across the entire global scars on the societies it touched. Those scars have commons. The numbers are daunting. Cost estimates only been deepened by a decade of austerity, have gone from “billions to trillions” according to sluggish productivity growth, stagnant real wages, the World Bank (2015), to an additional $3 trillion rising levels of household and corporate debt, and a year for developing countries alone, according to increasing inequality. Disparities of wealth and UNCTAD estimates. income have grown, and local communities are fragmenting under the dynamic and destructive Mobilizing investment on this scale will be challenging forces of hyperglobalization. Thousands of lives for many national policymakers. This is certainly true are being lost to “deaths of despair” each year in most developing countries where there have been (The Economist, 2019), and trust in political long-standing resource constraints on development institutions has evaporated. Growth has slowed in ambitions; but in recent years, sluggish investment, most developing countries, albeit with considerable particularly in the public sector, has also been a variation across regions. The struggle to create concern for policymakers in advanced economies, good jobs has intensified, with rapid urbanization, with many acknowledging serious
    [Show full text]
  • The Global Minotaur
    The Global Minotaur America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy Yanis Varoufakis © Zed Books London 8c New York About the author Yanis Varoufakis is Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens, Greece, where he now lives after more than two decades of studying and teaching in Britain and Australia (where he held academic posts, in reverse order, at the Universities of Sydney, Glasgow, Cambridge and East Anglia). This is his first book aimed at the general reader. His more stuffy books include Rational Conflict (1991), Foundations of Economics (1998) and (with Shaun Hargreaves Heap) Game Theory: A critical text (2004). Contents LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES AND BOXES vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS X 1 Introduction l 2 Laboratories of the future 26 3 The Global Plan 57 4 The Global Minotaur 90 5 The beast’s handmaidens 113 6 Crash 146 7 The handmaidens strike back 169 8 The Minotaur’s global legacy: the dimming sun, the wounded tigers, a flighty Europa and an anxious dragon 185 9 A future without the Minotaur? 221 n o t e s 229 RECOMMENDED READING 2 3 7 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 2 3 9 INDEX 2 4 2 Figures, tables and boxes Figures 2.1 US national income 43 3-1 Real GDP per capita during the period of the Global Plan 87 4.1 Stagnating wages, booming productivity 104 4-2 Index of average real US profit rates 106 4-3 The Global Minotaur in two diagrams 111 4.4 Effects of the Global Minotaur on the relative position of the United States 112 5-1 Correlation between median house price
    [Show full text]
  • 69, 7 October 2014 Special Issue on Piketty’S Capital
    sanity, humanity and science probably the world’s most read economics journal real-world economics review - Subscribers: 24,719 Subscribe here Blog ISSN 1755-9472 - A journal of the World Economics Association (WEA) 13,599 members, join here - Sister open-access journals: Economic Thought and World Economic Review - back issues at www.paecon.net recent issues: 68 67 66 65 64 63 62 61 60 59 Issue no. 69, 7 October 2014 Special issue on Piketty’s Capital The Piketty phenomenon and the future of inequality 2 Robert Wade Egalitarianism’s latest foe 18 Yanis Varoufakis Piketty and the limits of marginal productivity theory 36 Lars Syll Piketty’s determinism? 44 Ann Pettifor and Geoff Tily Piketty’s global tax on capital 51 Heikki Patomäki Reading Piketty in Athens 58 Richard Parker Pondering Mexican hurdles while reading Capital in the XXI Century 74 Alicia Puyana Mutis Piketty’s inequality and local versus global Lewis turning points 89 Richard Koo The growth of capital 100 Merijn Knibbe Piketty vs. the classical economic reformers 122 Michael Hudson Is Capital in the Twenty-first century Das Kapital for the twenty-first century? 131 Claude Hillinger Piketty and the resurgence of patrimonial capitalism 138 Jayati Ghosh Unpacking the first fundamental law 145 James K. Galbraith Capital and capital: The second most fundamental confusion 149 Edward Fullbrook Piketty’s policy proposals: How to effectively redistribute income 161 David Colander Piketty: Inequality, poverty and managerial capitalism 167 Victor. A. Beker Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Are we doomed without a wealth tax? 175 Dean Baker Board of Editors, past contributors, submissions and etc.
    [Show full text]
  • The Global Minotaur America, the True Origins of The
    Zed Books is an independent progressive publisher with a reputation for cutting-edge international publishing. Innovative and thought-provoking, the Economic Controversies series strips back the often impenetrable façade of economic jargon to present bold new ways of looking at pressing issues, while explaining the hidden mechanics behind them. Concise and accessible, the books bring a fresh, unorthodox approach to a variety of controversial subjects. Series editor Edward Fullbrook is the founder and editor of the Real World Economics Review (formerly the Post-Autistic Economics Review), which has over 11,500 subscribers. As well as editing a number of books on economics, including Pluralist Economics (2008) and A Guide to What’s Wrong with Economics (2004), his essays on economics and philosophy have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals. About the author Yanis Varoufakis is Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens, Greece, where he now lives after more than two decades of studying and teaching in Britain and Australia (where he held academic posts, in reverse order, at the Universities of Sydney, Glasgow, Cambridge and East Anglia). This is his first book aimed at the general reader. His more stuffy books include Rational Conflict (1991), Foundations of Economics (1998) and (with Shaun Hargreaves Heap) Game Theory: A critical text (2004). The Global Minotaur America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy Yanis Varoufakis Z Zed Books London & New York The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy was first published in 2011 by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.zedbooks.co.uk Copyright © Yanis Varoufakis 2011 The right of Yanis Varoufakis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
    [Show full text]
  • Perspectives on the Global Financial Crisis from Emerging Managers and Public Policy Makers [Full Version] James L
    University of Massachusetts Boston ScholarWorks at UMass Boston Financial Services Forum Publications Financial Services Forum 8-25-2014 Perspectives on the Global Financial Crisis From Emerging Managers and Public Policy Makers [Full Version] James L. Grant University of Massachusetts Boston, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.umb.edu/financialforum_pubs Part of the Economic Policy Commons, International Economics Commons, Public Economics Commons, and the Public Policy Commons Recommended Citation Grant, James L., "Perspectives on the Global Financial Crisis From Emerging Managers and Public Policy Makers [Full Version]" (2014). Financial Services Forum Publications. Paper 33. http://scholarworks.umb.edu/financialforum_pubs/33 This Research Report is brought to you for free and open access by the Financial Services Forum at ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. It has been accepted for inclusion in Financial Services Forum Publications by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Perspectives on the Global Financial Crisis From Emerging Managers and Public Policy Makers Full Version James L. Grant PhD Associate Professor of Accounting and Finance University of Massachusetts Boston And President, JLG Research August 25, 2014 ______________________________________________ FINANCIAL SERVICES FORUM COLLEGE OF MANAGEMENT UNIVERISTY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON ________________________________________ Perspectives on the Global Financial Crisis From Emerging Managers and Public Policy Makers Edited Manuscript: James L. Grant PhD Associate Professor of Accounting and Finance University of Massachusetts Boston And President, JLG Research With Special Contribution from: Richard T. Selden, PhD Carter Glass Professor of Economics Emeritus University of Virginia Version: February 25, 2014 ([email protected]) © 2014 All Rights Reserved Worldwide Perspectives on the Global Financial Crisis from Emerging Managers and Public Policy Makers, James L.
    [Show full text]
  • The Political Economy of Unsustainability
    sustainability Review Finance Unchained: The Political Economy of Unsustainability Glenn Fieldman Environmental Studies Program, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave., San Francisco, CA 94132, USA; [email protected] Received: 9 January 2020; Accepted: 17 March 2020; Published: 24 March 2020 Abstract: This article explains how the liberation of finance from the Bretton Woods constraints imposed after World War II has shaped the resulting “neoliberal” political economy into a political economy that is inhospitable, if not hostile, to the kind of regulation and public investment necessary to address the climate emergency and other environmental problems, and has contributed to levels of inequality that constitute a social crisis in their own right. Using the United States as an example, the author explains how mobile finance and the accompanying neoliberal ideology impose “checks” on a range of governmental policies, and moreover, have led to inadequate levels of public and private investment, both generally and in areas crucial to reduce carbon emissions. The article concludes with a discussion of how a new set of international monetary and financial arrangements along the lines that Keynes originally envisioned could support a “Green New Deal” sustainability strategy or, absent such an international agreement, how capital controls imposed nationally could constitute a temporary solution to the problems of insufficient regulation and investment. Keywords: finance; financialization; Bretton Woods; capital controls; Green New Deal; U.S. climate policy; public investment 1. Introduction In 1973, the Bretton Woods international monetary and financial system agreed at the end of World War II came to an end—and with it, the “financial repression” that had been at its heart: a system of fixed exchange rates that greatly reduced opportunities and incentives for speculation, the International Monetary Fund to offer temporary loans to protect the exchange rate system, and capital controls applied nationally.
    [Show full text]
  • Bibliography of the Global Financial/Economic Crisis
    Bibliography of the Global Financial/Economic Crisis 38th edition, May 2018 Compiled by Thomas Bourke All works are available from the EUI Library. Full details and shelfmarks: http://biblio.eui.eu/ 1. Origins 2. Empirical and narrative works 3. Finance and Banking 4. Risk, derivatives and hedge funds 5. Regulation, central banking and economic governance 6. The Crisis in Europe and the Euro Area 7. Labour Market and Socio-Economic Aspects 8. Ethical Aspects 9. New Comparative and Historical Literature (since January 2008) 10. Prospective and normative works – implications and aftermath 11. Research and methodological implications. 1. ORIGINS AND GENERAL The Global Economic Crisis: a chronology by Larry Allen The Concise Encyclopedia of the Great Recession 2007-2012 by Jerry M. Rosenberg The Global Financial Crisis: genesis, policy response and road ahead by Satyendra Nayak Genesis of the Financial Crisis by Roderick Macdonald The Global Financial Crisis in Retrospect: evolution, resolution and lessons for prevention by Anthony Elson The Great Financial Meltdown: systemic, conjunctural or policy created? edited by Turan Subasat Global Economic Crisis: impacts, transmission and recovery edited by Maurice Obstfeld et al Rethinking the Financial Crisis edited by Alan S. Blinder et al Financial Crises, 1929 to the Present by Sara Hsu 2 Across the Great Divide: new perspectives on the Financial Crisis edited by Martin Neil Baily and John B. Taylor The Financial Crisis Reconsidered: the mercantilist origin of secular stagnation and boom-bust cycles by Daniel Aronoff The Global Financial Crisis: triggers, responses and aftermath by Tony Ciro The First Great Financial Crisis of the 21st Century: a retrospective edited by James R.
    [Show full text]
  • The Post-Widget Society Economic Possibilities for Our Children Lawrence H
    The Post-Widget Society Economic Possibilities for Our Children Lawrence H. Summers Lawrence H. Summers presents a new paradigm for thinking about the current economic and technological revolution We are buffeted by the sense that everything is accelerating: Digital technology is changing the way we work, shop, and socialize. And yet for all the talk about disruptive innovations, economic growth is largely stagnant. We are told that with new technologies average citizens are empowered as never before, and yet wide swaths of the population feel powerless and can no longer count on stable careers and a better life for their children. As Lawrence H. Summers shows in The Post-Widget Society, these are the BUSINESS & ECONOMICS paradoxes that define the economic revolution that is transforming our world. Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 4/17/2018 At the heart of this revolution are two dramatic developments in Western 9780374115654 | $27.00 / $38.00 Can. Hardcover | 256 pages economies: the declining significance of widgets (mass-produced goods) and Notes, Index | Carton Qty: 24 | 9 in H | 6 in W the rise of design goods (products that cost a lot to design but little to Brit., trans., 1st ser., audio, dram.: The Wylie produce); and the controversial prospect of secular stagnation, the long-term Agency phenomenon of negligible economic growth and depressed employment in a dynamic market economy. Summers’s trenchant analysis of these trends MARKETING reveals that they have profound implications not only for the future of jobs Author Appearances and widening income inequality but also for the nature of the state and the National Publicity very stability of society.
    [Show full text]
  • The-Global-Minotaur-Yanis-Varoufakis
    Zed Books is an independent progressive publisher with a reputation for cutting- edge international publishing. Innovative and thought-provoking, the Economic Controversies series strips back the often impenetrable façade of economic jargon to present bold new ways of looking at pressing issues, while explaining the hidden mechanics behind them. Concise and accessible, the books bring a fresh, unorthodox approach to a variety of controversial subjects. Series editor Edward Fullbrook is the founder and editor of the Real World Economics Review (formerly the Post-Autistic Economics Review), which has over 11,500 subscribers. As well as editing a number of books on economics, including Pluralist Economics (2008) and A Guide to What’s Wrong with Economics (2004), his essays on economics and philosophy have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals. About the author Yanis Varoufakis is Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens, Greece, where he now lives after more than two decades of studying and teaching in Britain and Australia (where he held academic posts, in reverse order, at the Universities of Sydney, Glasgow, Cambridge and East Anglia). This is his first book aimed at the general reader. His more stuffy books include Rational Conflict (1991), Foundations of Economics (1998) and (with Shaun Hargreaves Heap) Game Theory: A critical text (2004). The Global Minotaur America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy Yanis Varoufakis Zed Books London & New York The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy was first published in 2011 by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.zedbooks.co.uk Copyright © Yanis Varoufakis 2011 The right of Yanis Varoufakis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
    [Show full text]
  • |||GET||| the Global Minotaur America, Europe and the Future Of
    THE GLOBAL MINOTAUR AMERICA, EUROPE AND THE FUTURE OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY 3RD EDITION DOWNLOAD FREE Yanis Varoufakis | 9781783606108 | | | | | And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future (Paperback) It was probably an important injection into the public debate at the time but time has Europe and the Future of the Global Economy 3rd edition on. But it never is and there is always another excuse, but no responsibility taken. The global plan dissolved around as a result of the rising costs of the Vietnam War and domestic social programs transforming the USA from a surplus nation to a deficit nation. The dictatorship collapsed when I was at junior high school. This book helped me understand just how much of what we are told about the global economy, austerity and international trade is either extremely skewed or outright fallacious. Instead of reining in spending to tackle its twin deficits, they decided to do the opposite: to boost those deficits. But most of all because to be a theorist you have to admit the possibility of being wrong — the provisionality of knowledge — and you know you cannot spin your way out of a theoretical problem. As if to prove that supply needs no prompting when demand is plentiful, the presses started rolling. The Minotaur is dead, but the ugly handmaidens are alive and kicking. This was the role, supposedly, of the credit rating agencies and of the state's regulatory bodies. Dec 11, Randal Samstag rated it it was amazing Shelves: economicsfavorites. What was to follow was an ingenious scheme for the United States to maintain its hegemony even as a deficit economy: The Global Minotaur.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 3: the Global Plan
    Chapter 3: The Global Plan The remarkable opportunity The United States of America came out of the Second World War as the major and, in fact, if one excludes Switzerland, the only creditor nation. For the first time since the rise of capitalism, all of the world’s trade relied on a single currency, the dollar, and financed from a single epicentre, Wall Street. While half of Europe was under the control of the Red Army , and Europeans were openly questioning the merits of the capitalist system, the New Dealers , who had been running Washington since 1932, realised that history had presented them with a remarkable opportunity: To erect a post-war global order that would cast American hegemony in stainless steel. It was an opportunity that they seized with glee. Their audacious scheme sprang from the two sources that lie behind every great achievement: Fear and Power . The war endowed the United States with unprecedented military and economic might. But, at the same time, it acted as a constant reminder of America's failure properly to come to terms with the legacy of 1929 before the Japanese navy unleashed its bombs and torpedoes over Pearl Harbour. The New Dealers never forgot the unexpectedness of the Great Depression and its resistance to 'treatment'. The more power they felt they had in their hands the greater their fear that a new 1929 could turn it into thin ash running through their fingers. Even before the guns had gone silent in Europe, and before the Soviet Union emerged as a dragon to be slain, the United States understood that it 1 had inherited the historic role of reconstructing, in its image, the world of global capitalism.
    [Show full text]
  • Section Ii: International Political Economy
    POL17: Politics of the international economy 2020-21 Paper organiser: Jeremy Green <[email protected] > Lecturers Helen Thompson Jeremy Green Supervisors Jeremy Green Helen Thompson CONTENT The most severe constraints on modern politics have been those generated around the international economy. Capital flows over state borders can derail economies and destroy political aspiration. Changes in the prices at which goods are traded across state borders, sometimes brought about by governments themselves, can cause economic crises, precipitate regime change, and intensify geo-political conflict. By joining a monetary union or adopting another state's currency, states commit themselves to economic policies that deprive them of the kinds of political authority and power and a rhetorical language in which to describe modern politics that most have long taken for granted. Yet the international economy also creates political opportunities that can decisively turn a country's politics in a new direction, as China’s recent economic development has demonstrated. This paper looks at modern politics in this context. It puts today's debates about the nature of the international economy and its implications for modern politics in a historical context. The paper uses that historical understanding of both the arguments about economic life and the decisions governments have made about how to deal with international economic questions to illuminate different aspects of the domestic and international politics of modern nation-states today. LECTURES Michaelmas term Thursdays and Tuesdays at 12 1. Origins of the modern international economy (Jeremy Green) 2. The rise of the West (Jeremy Green) 3. The politics of the inter-war years (Helen Thompson) 4 The Bretton Woods settlement I (Helen Thompson) 5.
    [Show full text]