If you’re not reading this man

Paul Krugman

… then you might be pretty confused about what’s happening to our world, economically.

I recently finished a mid-career break to study globalization. When I started — 2005 — I wanted to explore something which was the common question among clients:  ‘Where is globalization heading?’  Rather than reply with an uninformed hunch, I decided to examine an episode of globalization going into reverse: the 1930s.

Little did I know that before I would finish, our own period of globalization would fall victim to the afflictions that ultimately strangled globalization before. The disease then was partly endogenous (a Minskyian boom/bust cycle) and partly exacerbated by deeply regrettable policy choices. History might not repeat itself but it sure does rhyme: we’re making some of the mistakes committed 75 years ago.