The Global Economic Crisis: Historical Roots, Lessons Learned, and Implications for Geopolitical Stability

Abstract

This chapter considers the origins of the current global economic crisis, the lessons learned from past crises, and how the pandemic-created economic crisis influences more than finance and monetary policy, but has implications for geopolitical stability. The current global financial crisis attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic is far more complex than simply a response to the Great Lockdown. Rather, the current crisis is rooted in the Great Recession of 2007–2009, and the resulting Global Financial Crisis of 2009–2016 that we argue did not end in 2016 but continued into the current crisis, serving as a means to reveal the structural changes in the international economic system that were only exacerbated by the pandemic context. The economic crises of the twenty-first century to date are analyzed and juxtaposed against the twentieth-century crises as a means to understand the roots of the structural issues. Thus providing a reminder for leaders and policymakers to consider decisions of the past to avoid an extreme socio-political outcome paralleling that of the post-Great Depression world.