LOUIS DREYFUS, PRESENTER: The world is in crisis.
The global economy is collapsing.
In the past few years, we’ve seen record levels of violence.
The stock market is down.
The value of the dollar has dropped by 70 per cent.
In Europe, the euro is trading at a discount to the US dollar.
In China, the country with the biggest economy in the world, it’s trading at almost double the price it was just a few years ago.
And it’s going to take time for the world to get its act together.
But if we can get some help from other countries, there are plenty of opportunities.
The first step is getting together a big group of nations to try to come up with a plan for what kind of economic and political response we need.
This is one of the ways we can do that.
It’s called a multilateral approach.
And here’s what it means.
It means that, if you’re a country that needs help, you can come together and say, “Let’s put a plan together.”
And then we’ll put together a plan that you can agree to and work on together, because it’s very hard to do things on your own.
It can take months, if not years, for a multilaterals plan to be approved by the world’s biggest and most powerful nations.
The idea behind multilateralism is that, by agreeing on a plan, we can all be part of making it happen.
But the problem is, the world is not divided into two big countries that are working together, but instead, it looks like we’re in a sort of two-tier world.
We’re the rich country, and we’re the poor country.
And if we don’t get our act together and find ways to cooperate together, we’ll just see more of the same.
In this episode, we’re talking with Professor Richard Bove, author of The Great Collapse.
Professor Bove is a former senior adviser to the International Monetary Fund and former deputy secretary of the World Bank.
He’s the author of several books on multilateral economics, including The Great Recession: How the Global Financial Crisis Will Turn Into a World War and Beyond.
In our next segment, we have a question for you.
This one’s from Geoff Baker, who’s a professor at the University of Queensland, Australia.
Geoff, thank you very much.
GEOFF BAKER: Thanks for having me.
Thank you for having us on the show.
And welcome back.
We’ve got a question from the listener.
Geoff Baker is a professor of economics at the Queensland University of Technology.
Geoff’s book, The Great Crash: How to Avoid the Great Recession and Get Prosperity, is out in September.
He is also an author of the new book, Rise of the Robots: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence and Its Impact on the Economy.
And his latest book is The Great Fall: How Global Capitalism Will Collapse and How You Can Stop It.
I want to hear from you.
GEEG BAKERS: I’m Geoff Baker.
I’m a professor in the School of Economics at Queensland University.
Geeg, thanks so much for having my questions.
So, we understand that you’re working on this new book and we want to know what you think about the topic.
What are some of the biggest problems we have right now in the financial system?
What are the biggest risks that we face in the coming years?
GEEGG BAKERN: I think, for the most part, the main problem that we have now is that the global economy has lost its balance.
The system is too big.
And I think the biggest danger that we’re facing is that it’s not going to be able to sustain itself in the long term, because the world needs to move away from a system where a few countries are able to create huge amounts of wealth for themselves and then they can redistribute it around the world.
That’s where we’re heading.
It will not be sustainable.
So what we need is a different system.
That is, a system that is more inclusive.
That allows everybody to contribute equally to the system, and that also provides incentives to create more wealth for everybody.
That way, we will be able, with our own resources, to get to a point where we can create a lot more wealth and have a lot less of a crisis.
So that is my big worry.
And what I’m working on right now is trying to create a more inclusive system, a new system, one that would help us create wealth for everyone.
What that means is that I want the world economy to be a little bit more transparent.
And we’re trying to get a better understanding of how we’re doing this.
And so what I do is I start by taking a look