A Year in Crises

Tim Sahay surveys the many crises covered in The Polycrisis newsletter over the last year and identifies four key shifts: northern countries are increasingly concerned with their own economic resilience but have not reformed the international financial system, so the global south remains increasingly vulnerable and disadvantaged; the past two years have witnessed more violent conflict than any time since the Second World War; in a surge of strikes and union activity, labor is more assertively pursuing a fair share in the green transition; and record highs of goods have been traded across borders – including between the US and China – despite tensions and rhetoric of reshoring and friend-shoring. Sahay then highlights a few predictions the newsletter got wrong, and anticipates an anti-incumbency trend in the record number of elections planned for 2024.