Interview, Fireside Chat
Zachary Carter, Author "The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes"
- Global threats are projected to include the deterioration of the European Union, a breakdown in U.S.-China relations, climate change, and a coronavirus pandemic persisting for years.
- Immediate action on public health is presented as a prerequisite for economic prosperity, with no tradeoff identified between health measures and economic growth.
- A future policy approach is anticipated to be a multi-pronged, massive program aimed at simultaneously resolving the climate crisis, repairing U.S.-China relations, saving the EU, and controlling the coronavirus.
- The United States may face a loss of emergency public health capacity unless it abandons international ideals surrounding globalization.
- The Bretton Woods system, established in 1944, is predicted to collapse approximately two decades after its creation, having evolved into institutions with little connection to the original 1944 agreement.
- The trading union created by the Bretton Woods agreement is noted for a historical period of great harmony where member countries did not go to war with each other.
- The economic profession is described as having never fully addressed the philosophical foundations of Keynesian theory, accepting policies without their underlying moral and social justifications.
- Failure to address inequality and societal cohesion is expected to result in decades of dysfunction, mass strikes, street demonstrations, and potential government overthrows.
- Societies are predicted to become difficult to govern if economic policy is ordered solely to the preferences of the wealthy.
- The effectiveness of the Bretton Woods system in preventing specific political conflicts, such as the war in Vietnam, is questioned due to the limits of a global hegemon.