We have been inundated with books about the “financial crisis.” Surely, there is little more to be said. Martin Wolf agrees. In fact, he argues, too much has been said about the purely financial aspects of the crisis, important though they are. The underlying problem is that the world economy is unable to cope with the major shifts it is undergoing: rapid economic integration, competition from billions of new workers, technological revolutions, and the floods of capital across the world. These shifts have transformed relationships among economies and within them, creating new competitors, huge imbalances, and huge increases in inequality.

With those shifts have come vast and largely unforeseen financial shocks. The breakdown of the financial system in the high-income countries of the West was a symptom of unsuccessful, incomplete, and misguided adjustments to the imbalances created by this new world. The shocks are partly the result of the financial system’s frailties, which must be remedied durably and radically. But they are also the consequence of deeper economic forces. To focus only on the financial breakdown is to mistake symptoms with causes. As important as improving the financial system is making the global economic system more stable.

The Shifts and the Shocks is the tour d’horizon of the new world economy that only Martin Wolf could write. It cements his status as among our most farseeing and imaginative economic commentators. Wolf makes us see how partial and confused our view of the economic events of the last five years has been. No other book offers such a thoroughly global perspective, nor one that understands the connection between the macroeconomics and the financial system with Wolf’s level of sophistication and insight. It is not a book for those looking for a cheerful prognosis on the future of the European Union, or any number of other vital issues hanging fire, and it offers solutions that will seem extremely radical to some, but neither is it without hope.

The new global economic order is lifting tens of millions of people out of poverty and creating new winners and losers at an unimagined scale and pace. It’s simply high time, indeed past time, for our economics to keep pace with our economy. Now, with The Shifts and the Shocks, it has

马丁·沃尔夫（Martin Wolf）

英国《金融时报》副主编及首席经济评论员。为嘉奖他对财经新闻作出的杰出贡献，沃尔夫于2000年荣获大英帝国勋爵位勋章（CBE）。他是牛津大学纳菲尔德学院客座研究员，并被授予剑桥大学圣体学院和牛津经济政策研究院（Oxonia）院士，同时也是诺丁汉大学特约教授。自1999年和2006年以来，他分别担任达沃斯每年一度“世界经济论坛”的特邀评委成员和国际传媒委员会的成员。2006年7月他荣获诺丁汉大学文学博士；同年12月他又荣获伦敦政治经济学院科学（经济）博士荣誉教授的称号。