Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization - Harold James (2024)

 

Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization

Author: Harold James

Published by Yale University Press

Year: 2024

 

The eminent economic historian Harold James presents a new perspective on financial crises, dividing them into “good” crises, which ultimately expand markets and globalization, and “bad” crises, which result in a smaller, less prosperous world. Examining seven turning points in financial history—from the depression of the 1840s through the Great Depression of the 1930s to the Covid-19 crisis—James shows how crashes prompted by a lack of supply, like the oil shortages of the 1970s, lead to greater globalization as markets expand and producers innovate to increase supply. By contrast, crises triggered by a lack of demand—such as the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2008—result in less globalization as markets contract, austerity measures are imposed, and skepticism of government grows.

By considering not only the times but also the observers who shaped our understanding of each crisis—from Karl Marx to John Maynard Keynes to Larry Summers—James shows how the uneven course of globalization has led to new economic thinking, and how understanding this history can help us better prepare for the future.

Livro: Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization - Harold James

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Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization

By Harold James

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023)

James says: 

    "My book is in a sense an outgrowth of the COVID-19 pandemic and the dramatic change it wrought in everyone’s lives, and in geopolitics. I had been thinking about globalization and its discontents for over 30 years, and became intrigued by the way that there are historical reversals, as in the Great Depression, but also new phases of intense interconnection. The COVID crisis then seemed to me to hold analogies with previous moments when globalization was reimagined and reconfigured, such as the mid-nineteenth-century famines and revolutions, or the supply shocks of the 1970s. 

    The current rhetoric about deglobalization is oblivious to the way in which technology (comprising weightless products) links the world in novel and profound ways. Unlike most people who see the world fragmenting and splitting into blocs, I see a dynamic – similar to that of the mid-nineteenth century or the later twentieth century – in which a concern with competent government and improved, more efficient business structures would drive a new wave of adoption of technologies, as well as eventually more opening – if you like, more globalization, and more beneficent globalization."