Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
The Great Rebalancing: Trade, Conflict, and the Perilous Road Ahead for the World Economy . MICHAEL PETTIS . Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press , 2013. ix + 222 pp. $29.95; £19.95. ISBN: 978-0-6911-5868-6
Book Reviews
Michael Pettis is a former Wall Street banker, Latin America specialist and hedge-fund manager. Currently a finance professor at Peking University, he has become over the last few years one of the most sought after commentators on the Chinese economy in the Western media. Pettis's most recent book commendably avoids turgid academic language and should be readily understood by non-specialists. It is a highly readable summation of the many complex ideas on the global economy that he has been disseminating in interviews and through his blog since arriving in China some ten years ago.
The Great Rebalancing is divided into nine chapters, beginning with an exploration of the root causes of the 2008 financial meltdown. The next two chapters are a theoretical exposition on the long-term impact of international trade imbalances, and the many forms of trade intervention that exist. Chapter four recapitulates how the Chinese economy has come thus far; to what extent its development model can be considered historically unique, and why both internal and external imbalances mean it will not be able to sustain high growth rates any longer. Chapters five and six broaden the scope of discussion with an ambitious prognosis of the Eurozone crisis, how it is linked to China, and where the blame for it lies. Chapter seven...