Perhaps the most apt metaphor to describe the decade ahead is that investors, consumers and taxpayers will all be rafting whitewater rapids with ever-briefer stretches of calm. Geopolitical / financial risks are proliferating and becoming more difficult to predict or hedge for a very basic reason: the era of global integration and accord has ended and the era of global disintegration and discord is heating up. In historian Peter Turchin’s terminology, when everyone finds reasons to cooperate, the result is an era of accord; when everyone finds reasons not to cooperate, the result is an era of discord. Beneath the chaotic … Continue reading 10 Geopolitical / Financial Risks to the Global Economy