The Doom Loop: Why the World Economic Order Is Spiraling into Disorder - Hardback

Globalization and its institutions have failed to adapt to today's political and economic realities. What went wrong, and how can we reverse our descent into chaos?

The US, once the world's undisputed superpower, is losing its dominant position. Rising economies such as China and India are increasingly exerting their influence, the West's share of global GDP continues to decline, and America's rules-based system risks becoming irrelevant. In business, competition can bring efficiency, balance, and innovation. But in the marketplace for global power, things look rather different.

In The Doom Loop, acclaimed economist Eswar S. Prasad argues that the very forces expected to stabilize the world order are instead fueling disarray. Rather than promoting shared prosperity, globalization has deepened inequality in many countries, stoked political backlash, and contributed to escalating trade wars.

Economic institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, founded to foster cooperation, have failed to adapt to twenty-first-century realities. The rise of “middle powers” such as South Africa, Brazil, and Indonesia once suggested the possibility of a stable multipolar future, but today these economies are increasingly forced to pick sides in an intensifying US-China struggle for global influence.

In clear-eyed, bracing prose, Prasad contends that we are caught in a destructive feedback loop between economics, domestic politics, and geopolitics. As instability becomes the status quo, he argues for radical new solutions to reinvigorate the world economy, prioritize common aspirations, and reverse our downward spiral into disaster.