I have not been a fan of popularizers like historian Niall Ferguson, but one has to admit that he puts his finger on the depth and complexity of the current crisis in this interview with a Canadian newspaper. He points out that the US is in a relatively privileged position because its currency and economy remain the central pillars of the world economy. But the crisis represents the end of globalization as we have known it since the end of the Cold War.

Ferguson states:

“There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable. The question is whether the general destabilization, the return of, if you like, political risk, ultimately leads to something really big in the realm of geopolitics. That seems a less certain outcome.”

We’ll see.