Further reading

DETAILED FOOTNOTES

  1. Gerstle (2022), The rise and fall of the neoliberal order for a detailed account of the historical underpinnings of the post-1980 environment of globalised markets, capital and labour
  2. Dannhauser (2020), Globalisation and the deflation machine, Maxey (2020), Dismantling the deflation machine, Dannhauser (2022), Taking back control?
  3. The period since the early 1980s had two essential features making it especially beneficial to capital owners. The first was the secular decline in risk-free bond yields, alongside the long bull market in risk assets. The second, emerging fully in the mid-1990s, was the high-frequency negative correlation between bonds and equities. Long-only balanced portfolios earned alpha from secularly declining risk-free rates, whilst enjoying the diversification benefits they offered from risk assets.
  4. Thompson (2022), Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century
  5. Chartres (2020), Cold War II
  6. Borio (2014), The international monetary and financial system: its Achilles heel and what to do about it
  7. Donald Trump’s re-election has focused attention on the electoral successes of other populist, anti-establishment figures and parties. But the more consequential effect has been on the policy platforms of centrist parties. To ward off populist insurgencies, they have increasingly aped both populists’ policy agendas and their means of political communication. Eatwell & Goodwin (2018), National populism: the revolt against liberal democracy; Goodhart (2017), The road to somewhere: the new tribes shaping British politics; or Krastev (2020), The light that failed: a reckoning
  8. Goodwin (2023), Values, voice and virtue: the new British politics
  9. Before the GFC, China accounted for 6% of global GDP (at current exchange rates), compared with 25% for the US and 22% for the eurozone (data from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook database). A decade on, China’s share of global output had increased to 16%, versus 25% for America and 16% for Europe. Measured on purchasing power parity, China’s economic heft is even greater
  10. Suleyman & Bhaskar (2023), The coming wave: technology, power and the 21st century’s greatest dilemma
  11. Brynjolfsson & McAfee (2016), The second machine age: work, progress and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies
  12. Suleyman & Bhaskar
  13. Suleyman identifies four intrinsic, problematic features of AI that set it apart from previous GPTs: it could have hugely asymmetric impacts (especially military); it displays hyper-evolution; it is omni-use; and it displays some autonomy
  14. Farrell & Newman (2023), Underground Empire: How America Weaponised The World Economy illustrates how far the US has already gone in using technology to project its geopolitical power (a more concise version of this argument). Its control of critical ‘choke points’ in the global ICT and financial networks has granted the US government untrammelled power over adversaries and allies alike. China has taken note. Xi’s Made in 2025 agenda is, arguably, an attempt by China to create its own critical nodes in the global industrial network.
  15. Perez (various), carlotaperez.org If Carlota Perez’s neo-Schumpeterian framework is the right way to think about technological revolutions, then a conducive political and social environment is a necessary condition for this phase to begin
  16. Perez (various), carlotaperez.org In her work, Carlota Perez identifies four distinct technological waves, before the current one centred on ICT: the industrial revolution (starting in the 1770s); the age of steam and railways (starting in the 1830s); the age of steel, electricity and heavy engineering (starting in the 1870s); and the age of oil, the automobile and mass production (starting in the 1900s)
  17. The four large state-owned banks, the policy banks and the People’s Bank of China have combined assets of 250tn renminbi ($34tn). That is a lot of balance sheet that can be deployed to clean up the extensive bad debts in the property sector and elsewhere.
  18. View taken by seasoned China watchers GaveKal/Dragonomics and Jon Anderson at EM Advisors
  19. Maxey (2019), Behind the illusion of stability, Cole (2017), Volatility and the alchemy of risk
  20. Maxey (2024, Something new under the sun
  21. Friedman (1980), Money and inflation
  22. Suleyman & Bhaskar