The writer was a central banker until 2013. He is the author of ‘Global Discord’One big thing was largely missing in recent discussions among economists and the economic policy community on the fringes of the IMF and World Bank spring meetings in Washington DC. The new geopolitics rarely surfaced at all.
For example, “friendshoring”, the shifting of production to politically friendly countries, was discussed in terms of welfare costs, but not whether it might help the world’s liberal democracies survive superpower conflict. Economic models take peace and order for granted.
The need for domestic redistribution was rightly discussed, but mainly without recognising the extra fiscal constraints presented by greater defence expenditure. The dollar’s gyrations were inevitably a fixation, but without much of a nod to how far sustaining its global status, and hence Washington’s role in keeping the sea lanes open, depends on the Federal Reserve engineering a return to domestic price stability.