A New World Order Is Here, and It Looks a Lot Like Mercantilism

“The crisis was not a failure of the free-market system,” declared George W. Bush in November 2008. “And the answer is not to try to reinvent that system. It is to fix the problems we face, make the reforms we need and move forward with the free markets principles that have delivered prosperity and hope to people across the world.”

He has been proven wrong about this. Very few politicians in the western world would voice such thoughts now, let alone Bush’s assertions that capitalism was “by far the most efficient and just way of structuring an economy,” an “engine of social mobility,” and “the highway to the American dream.” This year’s US election delivered the ultimate repudiation to those ideas. Bush’s own party, in particular, now rejects most of them outright.