Since the summer of 2007, a wave of financial crises has engulfed the West, overthrowing conventional wisdom on policy, devastating economies and throwing the future of Europe into question. The lecture will address the legacy of these unexpected events. Among these results, it will argue, are: prolonged weakness in private consumption in high-income countries; a challenge to pre-crisis conventional wisdom on economics and economic policy; a battle over re-regulation of the financial sector; a need to deal with the longer-term consequences of the unprecedented policy interventions by central banks and governments; a weakening in the fiscal positions of many countries; a threat to the survival of the Euro zone and so to the post-second-world-war project for unifying Europe; a need to re-balance global patterns of demand and supply; and, last but not least, an enduring transformation in the balance of global prestige and power.
Martin Wolf is Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times.
For more from Martin please see the following GP Dialogue: Jean-Michel Severino and Martin Wolf on 'Global Imbalances and Social Challenges'.
