Niall Ferguson: How to Use and Misuse History in Cold War II With China
Today, the idea of Cold War II is fast becoming conventional wisdom.
President Donald Trump’s initial trade war against China was evolving into a tech war — and more. I vividly remember a world map highlighting which countries were buying Huawei’s 5G hardware
The US floods the world in dollars; China floods the world in hardware.
One reason that some were slow to discern the drift to a new cold war was that it seemed economically irrational from the point of view of a “Washington consensus” that for years had prioritized free trade, global capital flows and open borders, not to forget the wishful thought that greater economic integration between the US and China would magically lead to political liberalization in the latter.
the widespread belief that the European Monetary Union (EMU) would fall apart in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008-09
I was emotionally attracted to the breakup of the euro area, as I had been against the idea of monetary union in the 1990s.
Part of me wanted the euro to blow up just for me to be right.
However sub-optimal EMU might be as a currency area, it still made political sense for both the Germans and the countries on the periphery because the former got a weaker exchange rate than they would otherwise have had, and the latter got lower interest rates.
If the Germans went back to the mark, their country would become Switzerland; if the Greeks went back to the drachma, they would become Argentina.
However, what many of us missed in 2016 was that the populist backlash would shatter the liberal or centrist political establishments, first in Britain, then in the US, as well as in countries as different as Brazil and India.
I became too personally engaged, actively campaigning for Remain, and lost the dispassionate spirit that is a prerequisite for learning from history.
Which Federal Reserve chair does Jerome Powell more closely resemble — Paul Volcker or his predecessor, Arthur Burns?
It is astonishing how few economists agreed with former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers when, in February 2021, he correctly predicted an inflation breakout. This was elementary macroeconomics.
Niall Ferguson Bloomberg 5 maj 2024
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