The very unpleasant echo from the 1930s

The very unpleasant echo from the 1930s
The Market Monetarist: 26 November 2015

I am trying very hard not to become alarmist, but I must admit that I see very little positive news at the moment and I continue to see three elements – monetary policy failure/weak growth, the rise of extremist politics (Trump, Orban, Erdogan, Putin, ISIS etc) and sharply rising geopolitical tensions coming together to a very unpleasant cocktail that brings back memories of the 1930s and the run up to the second World War.

It has long been my hypothesis that the contraction in the global economy on the back of the Great Recession – which in my view mostly is a result of monetary policy failure – is causing a rise in political extremism both in Europe (Syriza, Golden Dawn, Orban etc) and the US (Trump) and also to a fractionalization and polarization of politics in normally democratic nations.

That is leading to the appeal of right-wing populists like Donald Trump, but equally to the appeal of islamist groups like ISIS among immigrant youth in for example France and Belgium. Once the democratic alternative loses its appeal extremists and populists will gain ground.

The geopolitical version of this is Ukraine and Syria (and to some extent the South China Sea). With no growth the appeal of protectionism and ultimately of war increases.

Unfortunately the parallels to the 1930s are very clear – without overstating it try to look at this:

• Syrian war vs Spanish civil war: Direct and indirect involvement of authoritarian foreign regimes (Stalin/Hitler vs Erdogan/Putin)
• Euro  zone vs the gold standard
• The rise of populists and extremists: Communists, Nazis and Fascists vs Syriza, Golden Dawn, Jobbik, Orban, regional separatism in Europe, anti-immigrant sentiment, Trump and ISIS (in Europe) etc.
• The weakening (failure?) of democratic institution: Weimar Republic vs the total polarization of politics across Europe – weak and unpopular minority governments with no “political muscle” for true economic reforms across Europe.

Maybe this is too alarmist, but you would have to be blind to the lessons from history not to see this. However, that does not mean that history will repeat itself – I certain hope not – but if we ignore the similarities to the 1930s things will only get worse from here.

PS if you are looking for more empirical evidence on these issues then have a look at Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick and Christoph Trebesch’s recent very good post on voxeu.org on The political aftermath of financial crises: Going to extremes.