Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze

the idea of an “all-American crisis” obscures the reality of profound interconnection.14 In so doing, it also misdirects criticism and righteous anger. In fact, the crisis was not merely American but global and, above all, North Atlantic in its genesis. And in a contentious and problematic way it had the effect of recentering the world financial economy on the United States as the only state capable of meeting the challenge it posed.15 That capacity is an effect of structure—the United States is the only state that can generate dollars. But it is also a matter of action, of policy choices—positive in the American case, disastrously negative in the case of Europe. Clarifying the scale of this interdependence and the ultimate dependence of the global financial system on the dollar is important not just for the sake of getting the history right. It matters also because it throws new light on the perilous situation created by the Trump administration’s declaration of independence from an interconnected and multipolar world.