For centuries, it has been considered a common knowledge that the Western world is more developed economically, has a qualitatively different approach to financial systems, and is the main contributor to the process of globalization. However, such thought seems to be reasonable only concerning certain historical periods. In the chapter “From Empire to Chimerica,” Niall Ferguson traces back the history of the Western financial rise and suggests that nowadays it is being challenged by the developing Eastern world.
Ferguson notes that nowadays the so-called emerging markets of East Asia and Latin America show positive trends of economic development becoming competitors of the Western superpowers and even making them dependent. China, once a powerful and wealthy agricultural empire, in 1700-1950 had experienced dramatic economic decline because of the industrial revolution in the West. The British were the first to expand their economic influence on Chinese territories in the 1830-s with the help of opium trade among other means.
Chinese Hong Kong became a fount of investment opportunities that opened up “the glory days of Victorian globalization” (Ferguson, 2008, p. 292). The period from the mid-XIX century till the outburst of World War I in 1914 was a golden time for international investors; the binding to the gold standard reduced the risk of exchange fluctuations (Ferguson, 2008).
The economic damages after World War II caused the need for state interference and restrictions on capital movements, the establishment of strict Bretton Woods’s system, and fixed exchange rates. The first globalization wave, thus, was curbed and revived only at the beginning of the 1970s when nongovernmental capital export was allowed, the gold standard suspended and free currency trade established. The Western imperialism continued to grow, with America being the key interesting superpower. The developing countries’ increasing financial dependence was made possible by the tricky policies of newly established structures, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank (Ferguson, 2008).
Among the significant changes in the world economy after World War II, was the emergence of the hedge funds. Ferguson describes the history of one of the most successful hedge funds, George Soros’s “Quantum”, which “pioneered the technique of borrowing from investment banks to take speculative long or short positions far over the fund’s capital” (2008, p. 319). After the Black Wednesday of September 1992, when the British currency devalued, Soros earned 1 billion dollars. Another notable invention of the 90-s was the mathematical model of options contract pricing developed by Fisher Black and Myron Scholes.
However, their subsequent company Long-Term Capital Management gaining profits on price differences on multiple markets did not last long, because of unpredictable fluctuations in the financial world.
Speaking about the rise of China, Ferguson notes that it had not suffered any severe losses during recent financial crises. Due to economic reforms and the absence of currency devaluations in the last two decades, China has become the creditor of the USA. The USA nowadays has the greatest state debt in the world, while China in 2007 had a 262 billion dollar account surplus (Ferguson 332). China is ready to lend, and America is ready to borrow, so they form an imaginary state of Chimerica. Many experts see this dependence as one of the preconditions the hedge funds spread, the upsurge in bank lending, and eventually – of the 2007 world financial crisis.
The hegemonic position of America and the Western world, thus, is nowadays arguable. The economic and financial system built by the Western nations after World War II seems no longer suitable for the whole world. And the major economic clash between the Eastern and the Western civilizations is there to come.
Reference
Ferguson, N. (2008). The ascent of money: A financial history of the world. New York, NY: The Penguin Press.