Permacrisis
A Plan to Fix a Fractured World
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
'Offers hope and good sense in equal measure'
Ian Bremmer
'A sensible plan for reform that can help us create a fairer and more equitable world'
Sheryl Sandberg
Problems are mounting.
We face sputtering growth, an escalating climate emergency, worsening inequality, poor policy responses, increasing nationalism and a decline in global co-operation.
But a permacrisis need not be permanent.
In this book, three of the most internationally respected and experienced thinkers of our time, Gordon Brown, Mohamed A. El-Erian and Michael Spence, writing with Reid Lidow, explain where we’ve gone wrong and set out what could be done to bring about a brighter future for generations to come. They look beyond today’s headlines and political rhetoric to offer a bold, big-picture vision and nuanced, achievable solutions for fixing our broken approaches to growth, economic management, and governance.
The world is changing. What that change looks like is up to us.
Customer Reviews
Crisis, what crisis
Mr Brown is the former UK Chancellor and PM. Mr El Erain, an Egyptian-American economist and businessman, is chief economic adviser at ‘Allianz’, former CEO of PIMCO (look it up if the name is not familiar to you), president of Queens College, Cambridge, and a columnist for ‘Bloomberg’ and the ‘FT’. Mr Spence is a Canadian-American Nobel laureate in economics, professor at NYU, professor emeritus at Stanford, and fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Permacrisis, which was named word of the year by ‘Collins’ dictionary in 2002, essentially means there’s just one damned crisis after another nowadays: Covid, conflict, geopolitics, extreme weather events, you name it. As noted by the authors, the net total losses in dollar terms of banks going broke are greater in 2023 than they were in 2008.
The big problem, according to them, is the decline of global growth over the last 20 years. (They would say that, of course. They’re economists.) The heart of this issue is supply constraints, they reckon. “Growth models which have focused too narrowly on privatisation and deregulation (read neoliberalism, or possibly neoconservatism. I get those two mixed up) have outlasted their use-by dates.”
The problem has been compounded, the authors argue, by inadequate public policy. “Public investment backed by appropriate financial risk sharing and incentives and, where appropriate, more nimble regulation, matter far more than any neoliberal model has ever acknowledged.” Hmm. Nimble regulation. There’s an oxymoron for you.
The authors also say governments “must also intervene to improve social cohesion and sustainability,” and flag a need for “new international economic governance in an age of renewed nationalism.” Good luck with that.
I want some of what these guys are smoking. It seems to me that Western governments do little else nowadays but interfere, sorry, intervene, with the stated aim of improving social and sustainability goals. And look how well that’s been going for us.
For a book allegedly written together, the writing style varies. I suspect the more entertaining sections are Mr El Erian’s doing, while Mr Brown is responsible for the panglossian political stuff. I agree neoliberalism was/is not the answer. Neither is this.