Dollar Primacy, Nationalism, and Labor Suppression: Three Vital Aspects of Global Economic Tumult

I’ve been parsing a lot of literature on political economy lately. Some of it is classical or historical—the canon, if you will, ranging from Gramsci to Paul Sneezy to Keynes.

But I’ve also been trying to keep abreast of the heterodox economists and pundits today who help us make sense of our global economic tumult. We’re actively making a more dangerous, depraved world in which there will be some winners, but many more losers—even within supposedly “winning” nations.

There are three crucial dimensions to the landscape of geopolitical economy that stand out to me at the moment:

1. The insecurity that US dollar supremacy causes.

2. The global price of economic nationalism and neo-Keynesian policies.

3. Developing economies’ labor suppression, especially in Asia, in response to a shifting economic order.

Below I’ve culled what I think are fantastic analyses of each of these problems.

None squarely address the problem of national security Keynesianism per se—something I addressed previously and will again. And none grapples with the seemingly invisible global debt crisis cannibalizing social orders across most of the world (to be fair, I’ve yet to come across an essay that does justice to the debt crisis).

But they all take a meta-narrative view of things while staying faithful to the data. Very helpful.

So here they are, with key pull quotes and summaries.