{"id":130066,"date":"2024-06-19T12:16:59","date_gmt":"2024-06-19T16:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=130066"},"modified":"2024-06-19T12:18:15","modified_gmt":"2024-06-19T16:18:15","slug":"nyt-op-ed-bret-stephens-how-capitalism-went-off-the-rails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=130066","title":{"rendered":"(NYT Op-ed) Bret Stephens–How Capitalism Went Off the Rails"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Group of 7 countries might have set a record when they met in Italy last week. Has there ever been a less popular assemblage of leaders<\/a> of the free world? Approval ratings ranged from Giorgia Meloni of Italy\u2019s about 40 percent<\/a> to Emmanuel Macron of France\u2019s 21 percent to Fumio Kishida of Japan\u2019s 13 percent. Last year the Edelman Trust Barometer<\/a> found that only 20 percent of people in the G7 countries thought that they and their families would be better off in five years. Another Edelman survey<\/a>, from 2020, uncovered a broad distrust of capitalism in countries across the world, \u201cdriven by a growing sense of inequity and unfairness in the system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why the broad dissatisfaction with an economic system that is supposed to offer unsurpassed prosperity? Ruchir Sharma, the chairman of Rockefeller International and a Financial Times columnist, has an answer that boils down to two words: easy money. In an eye-opening new book, \u201cWhat Went Wrong With Capitalism,\u201d he makes a convincing case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen the price of borrowing money is zero,\u201d Sharma told me this week, \u201cthe price of everything else goes bonkers.\u201d To take just one example: In 2010, as the era of ultralow and even negative interest rates was getting started, the median sale price<\/a> for a house in the United States hovered around $220,000. By the start of this year, it was more than $420,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowhere has inflation (in the broad sense of the term) been more evident than in global financial markets. In 1980 they were worth a total of $12 trillion \u2014 equal to the size of the global economy at the time. After the pandemic, Sharma noted, those markets were worth $390 trillion, or around four times the world\u2019s total gross domestic product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>

How Capitalism Went Off the Rails

By Bret Stephens, Opinion Columnist @nytimes<\/a>

"The social consequence of this is rage; the political consequence is populism."
https:\/\/t.co\/yD7bmUnqDw<\/a><\/p>— Stefan Michaelsen (@stefanmichaelse) June 19, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>