Since the end of the Cold War, world politics and the global economy have been gradually moving away from the (relative) stability that characterized the 1945-1990 era. That post World War Two era was unusual by the standards of modern history. Financial crashes and depressions were a regular feature of life from the Dutch Tulip Bubble of the seventeenth century right through the Great Depression. International politics were turbulent and tumultuous as well, with countries switching alliances and stabbing one another in the back with great gusto and regularity.
Hendrik Gerritsz Pot’s allegory of the Dutch tulip mania. The goddess of flowers is riding along with three drinking and money weighing men and two women on a car. Weavers from Haarlem have thrown away their equipment and are following the car. The destiny of the car is shown in the background. (Wikimedia)
The exhaustion of Europe, China and Japan after World War Two, and the bipolar rivalry between the nuclear superpowers, froze world politics through the end of the Cold War. The macroeconomic tools and tightly regulated national banking systems developed during and after World War Two made for greater economic stability until the world economy gradually outgrew the post-war system and financial and trade globalization created a new and much more volatile economic system that is still poorly understood.
