A Map of the New Normal

Bestselling economist Jeff Rubin warns that the shock inflation of 2021 is the front of a perfect storm of war, supply-chain disruption, geopolitical realignment, domestic upheaval, and energy scarcity that will change everything.

During the pandemic, government deficits skyrocketed to record highs while central banks primed the printing presses—and the time has come to pay for it. The ramifications of international COVID-19 spending could potentially last for decades, and inevitably one of the first consequences will be that central banks will lose control of interest rates, and subsequently, growth and inflation targets. The genie will be out of the bottle.

That is just the first symptom of a series of cascading upheavals. Supply-chain disruptions have already shown the vulnerability of the globalist model that has fueled growth for the past decades. War has not only shown the fragility of the status quo, but has revealed diplomatic and economic rifts that promise to shift trading patterns. At the same time, the precarity of the US dollar underlines the life-or-death importance of foreign markets and resources, energy in particular. And consolidation of a Eurasian bloc, from Russia to China, and encompassing old enemies like Iran and former US ally Saudi Arabia, hint that the upheaval of COVID-19 was just the beginning.

Tracking trade wars and kinetic wars, central banks and runs on banks, pipelines blown up and startups knocked down, A Map of the New Normal gives us a glimpse of a near future that will look very different from the recent past. It reminds us that our mortgage rates and job security, our grocery bills and investments, are all tied to events set in motion by governments, corporations, and black swans around the world.