The global economic crisis that started in 2007-8 as a US-centred financial crisis was not widely anticipated by mainstream economists: International Political Economy Assignment, NTU, Singapore

The global economic crisis that started in 2007-8 as a US-centred financial crisis was not widely anticipated by mainstream economists and IPE scholars. Yet its impact on the IPE has been both enduring and deep in its effects. While some states, notably China, and several of its trading allies, such as Australia, were relatively unharmed by the GFC, by contrast, some of the most prosperous regions in the world, notably the European Union have been deeply, possibly irrevocably, damaged by the crisis and its aftermath, both in terms of economic and political outcomes.

Similarly, the economic and political uncertainties generated by the crisis have brought the whole edifice of neoliberal international economic governance under pressure and critical scrutiny, forcing fundamental rethinking about how global capitalism works and how it should be governed.

Both crisis and fundamental policy rethinking have been massively ratcheted up by the COVID-19 pandemic which some believe has threatened not only to bring a holt to globalization but to reverse the process as protectionists lockdowns are rolled out around the world to bring the virus under control.