You hear it all the time: we need to defend our liberal, multilateral economic order. If you want to get a roomful of people in places like Davos to keep nodding their heads to exhaustion, this is what you say.
I disagree vehemently with that statement. I believe that we are facing a fundamental choice between solving the problem and solving the crime — between addressing the issues or playing a blame game. The G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance argues that our multilateral institutions need repair. This is no doubt true but I would go further than proposed suggestions for greater efficiency and more inclusiveness.
Politicians like Donald Trump, Viktor Orban and Matteo Salvini have risen to power because of the deep malfunctioning of our systems of global capitalism. Brexit is not the result of Russian meddling or an alleged reporting bias of the BBC, but of a long series of unresolved political conflicts and the rentier business model the UK chose to pursue inside Europe’s single market. The global financial crisis and our policy responses exposed how the system had become unsustainable.