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Title details for The Levelling by Michael O'Sullivan - Available

The Levelling

What's Next After Globalization

by Michael O'Sullivan
Jeff Bottoms
Audiobook
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A brilliant analysis of the transition in world economics, finance, and power as the era of globalization ends and gives way to new power centers and institutions.

The world is at a turning point similar to the fall of communism. Then, many focused on the collapse itself, and failed to see that a bigger trend, globalization, was about to take hold. The benefits of globalization—through the freer flow of money, people, ideas, and trade—have been many. But rather than a world that is flat, what has emerged is one of jagged peaks and rough, deep valleys characterized by wealth inequality, indebtedness, political recession, and imbalances across the world's economies.
These peaks and valleys are undergoing what Michael O'Sullivan calls "the levelling"—a major transition in world economics, finance, and power. What's next is a levelling-out of wealth between poor and rich countries, of power between nations and regions, of political accountability from elites to the people, and of institutional power away from central banks and defunct twentieth-century institutions such as the WTO and the IMF.
O'Sullivan then moves to ways we can develop new, pragmatic solutions to such critical problems as political discontent, stunted economic growth, the productive functioning of finance, and political-economic structures that serve broader needs.
The Levelling comes at a crucial time in the rise and fall of nations. It has special importance for the US as its place in the world undergoes radical change—the ebbing of influence, profound questions over its economic model, societal decay, and the turmoil of public life.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 28, 2019

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781549171543
      • File size: 372281 KB
      • Duration: 12:55:35

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      April 15, 2019
      A gloomy report on the end of globalization featuring a unique thesis that harkens back to 17th-century England. O'Sullivan, the chief investment officer in the international wealth management division at Credit Suisse, first imparts a wealth of historical information to explain how the current sense of a "world turned upside down" is actually a transition phase not unlike the tail end of the previous period of global growth that occurred just before World War I. Globalization, in short, is defunct, and following a huge expansion in world markets, trade, and financial institutions, it is all coming apart--as in the early decades of the previous century--due to protectionism, tariffs, rise in poverty, debt, ill-health, unemployment, inequality, protest voting, and right-wing policies. The author begins his study with the depressing state of current affairs and then addresses the challenge of "darker scenarios that threaten the world we live in." He delineates a fascinating grassroots movement that erupted during the throes of the English civil war, one that might lend practical solutions for today. The Levellers emerged as a democratic faction of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army, a "mongrel" group of regular people, soldiers, and tradespeople, both men and women, as opposed to the "Grandees" who held the power in Parliament. Over the course of several so-called Putney Debates in St. Mary's Church in London in the 1640s, they laid out a case for "repairing the broken contract of trust between elected representatives and their electorates," pleading for equality, accountability, responsibility, and transparency in government, along with unfettered trade and debt relief. The ramifications of the Levellers' demands later appeared in the revolutionary constitutions of America and France, and O'Sullivan also examines what Alexander Hamilton might have suggested as a solution for our current mess. With a generous nod to the work of previous authors and experts, the author offers a solid synthesis of prognosis and practical solutions. While the book is somewhat of a structural patchwork, the concept of O'Sullivan's Levelling presentation is fresh and thought-provoking.

      COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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