Episode One: The Battle of Ideas

A global economy, energized by technological change and unprecedented

flows of people and money, collapses in the wake of a terrorist attack

…. The year is 1914.

Worldwide war results, exhausting the resources of the great powers

and convincing many that the economic system itself is to blame. From

the ashes of the catastrophe, an intellectual and political struggle

ignites between the powers of government and the forces of the

marketplace, each determined to reinvent the world’s economic order.

Two individuals emerge whose ideas, shaped by very different

experiences, will inform this debate and carry it forward. One is a

brilliant, unconventional Englishman named John Maynard Keynes. The

other is an outspoken émigré from ravaged Austria, Friedrich von

Hayek.

But a worldwide depression holds the capitalist nations in its grip.

In opposition to both Keynes and Hayek stand not only Hitler’s Third

Reich but Stalin’s Soviet Union, schooled in the communist ideologies

of Marx and Lenin and bent on obliterating the capitalist system

altogether.

For more than half a century the battle of ideas will rage. From the

totalitarian socialist systems to the fascist states, from the

independent nations of the developing world to the mixed economies of

Europe, and the regulated capitalism of the United States, government

planning will gradually take over the commanding heights.

But in the 1970s, with Keynesian theory at its height and communism

fully entrenched, economic stagnation sets in on all sides. When a

British grocer’s daughter and a former Hollywood actor become heads of

state, they join forces around the ideas of Hayek, and new political

and economic policies begin to transform the world.

Episode Two: The Agony of Reform

As the 1980s begin and the Cold War grinds on, the existing world

order appears firmly in place. Yet beneath the surface powerful

currents are carving away at the economic foundations.

Western democracies still struggle with deficits and inflation, while

communism hides the failure of its command economy behind a facade of

military might. In Latin America populist dictators strive to thwart

foreign economic exploitation, piling up debt and igniting

hyperinflation in the process. In India and Africa bureaucracies

established to end poverty through scientific planning spawn black

markets and corruption and stifle enterprise.

Worldwide, the strategies of government planning are failing to

produce their intended results. From Bolivia and Peru to Poland and

Russia, the free-market policies of Thatcher and Reagan are looked to

as a possible blueprint for escape. One by one, economies in crisis

adopt “shock therapy” — a rapid conversion to free-market

capitalism.

As the command economies totter and collapse, privatization transfers

economic power back into entrepreneurial hands, and whole societies go

through wrenching change. For some the demands and opportunities of

the market provide a longed for liberation. Others, lacking the means

to adapt, see their security and livelihood swept away. In this new

capitalist revolution enlightened enterprise and cynical exploitation

thrive alike. The sum total of global wealth expands, but its unequal

distribution increases, too, and economic regeneration exacts a high

human price.

Episode Three: The New Rules of the Game

With communism discredited, more and more nations harness their

fortunes to the global free-market. China, Southeast Asia, India,

Eastern Europe and Latin America all compete to attract the developed

world’s investment capital, and tariff barriers fall. In the United

States Republican and Democratic administrations both embrace

unfettered globalization over the objections of organized labor.

But as new technology and ideas drive profound economic change,

unforeseen events unfold. A Mexican economic meltdown sends the

Clinton administration scrambling. Internet-linked financial markets,

unrestricted capital flows, and floating currencies drive levels of

speculative investment that dwarf trade in actual goods and services.

Fueled by electronic capital and a global workforce ready to adapt,

entrepreneurs create multinational corporations with valuations

greater than entire national economies.

When huge pension funds go hunting higher returns in emerging markets,

enterprise flourishes where poverty once ruled, but risk grows, too.

In Thailand the huge reservoir of available capital proves first a

blessing, then a curse. Soon all Asia is engulfed in an economic

crisis, and financial contagion spreads throughout the world, until

Wall Street itself is threatened. A single global market is now the

central economic reality. As the force of its effects is felt, popular

unease grows. Is the system just too complex to be controlled, or is

it an insiders’ game played at outsiders’ expense? New centers of

opposition to globalization form and the debate turns violent over who

will rewrite the rules.

Yet prosperity continues to spread with the expansion of trade, even

as the gulf widens further between rich and poor. Imbalances too

dangerous for the system to ignore now drive its stakeholders to

devise new means to include the dispossessed lest, once again,

terrorism and war destroy the stability of a deeply interconnected

world.