The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

by Peter Zeihan

By 1900 the United States had already displaced the entirety of the British Empire as the world’s single-largest economy. Furthermore, the Americans didn’t even join World War I until three years in, and so were able to serve as creditor to the Europeans rather than needing to debase their currency to keep fighting. The British pound wasn’t as debased as the franc or deutschmark or ruble, but the dollar wasn’t debased at all.* Even better, the Americans were perfectly willing to provide the World War II Allies with anything they needed—oil or fuel, steel or guns, wheat or flour—so long as they were paid in gold. By war’s end the U.S. economy wasn’t only far larger and that of Europe far smaller. The U.S. dollar wasn’t just the only reasonable medium of exchange in the entire Western Hemisphere: it had sucked the very metal out of Europe that would have enabled a long-term currency competitor anywhere in the Eastern Hemisphere. If anything, this is truer than it sounds. After all, the metals-backed currencies of Europe were the culmination of all human civilizations of all eras stripping the entire planet of precious metals since before the dawn of recorded history.