The Old Order Is Dead. Do Not Resuscitate.

Few things are more disconcerting than feeling the ground shift beneath you, as anyone who has experienced a serious earthquake knows. This is what we are living through. A way of ordering economic life — neoliberalism — that emerged in the 1980s is weakening rapidly.

Once-heretical ideas such as raising tariffs have gained influence, and believers in the old order, plus almost everyone else, have become disoriented. Where are we heading? Are we subject to the whims of a madman? For the first time in most people’s memory, our economic future seems uncertain for a new reason: The immediate past cannot tell us what comes next.