Mike O’Sullivan, author, economist, investor. May 2020. (13: 22)


I. Pre-watching task. Working in pairs support the statement you agree with:
● We are at the end of globalization… We’re going to miss it.
● The bounties of globalization have not been shared with the many.
● The pandemic has further exposed the frailties of the globalized world order.

II. What ideas do the following sentences support?

  1. Billions of people rose out of poverty. More impressively, wealth per adult in countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh increased by over six times in the last 20 years. The number of democracies rose, and countries as diverse as Chile, Malaysia, Estonia, held free and fair elections. The role of women improved in many parts of the world, if you look at wage equality in countries like Spain, or access to education in countries like Saudi Arabia. Economically, supply chains spread like webs around the world, with car parts criss-crossing borders before the final product came into place.
  2. Inequality and new, record levels of indebtedness — for example, world debt-to-GDP is now pushing levels not seen since the Napoleonic Wars 200 years ago — show us that the advantages of globalization have been misdirected. The Global Financial Crisis was the result of this mismanagement, and since then policymakers have done little but contain, rather than solve, the problems of our age. 
  3. Against a backdrop of trade wars, some countries like the US have outbid others for masks. There’s been hacking of vaccine programs, and a common enemy, the pandemic, has not been met with a common response. So any hope that we might have a world vaccine or a world recovery program is in vain.

III. What does the speaker believe the new world order will be defined by? How does he explain his take? What future does he think awaits fast-growing economies?

IV. Topic & thesis.

V. Do you agree with the speaker? Explain why.