Advocates of cryptocurrencies have long argued that the new technology behind them would break the government monopoly on currency regulation. The collapse of the FTX exchange illustrates why this sort of “disruption” is unlikely in the realm of currency control, which has historically been and will remain the domain of governments.
After an inauspicious start, 2022 has been a year of low-key but surprisingly successful muddling through for multilateralism. While the war in Ukraine had the potential to throw international institutions into disarray, overall these institutions weathered the storm in better shape than seemed imaginable shortly after the invasion.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump upended what was once a relatively staid global economic and trade system. For all of the upheaval he created, though, Trump left office with only one clear-cut accomplishment: an updated NAFTA deal. And even as Trump sowed chaos in America’s trade relationships, most of the world reinforced its commitment to trade liberalization.
