Is the Age of Plenty Over?

By Ed D'Agostino | August 2, 2024

We have been talking about resiliency-driven inflation for the past several weeks. As the US and its Western allies realign supply chains to strengthen economic resiliency, the cost of certain goods and commodities will go up.

I received a note from Bill White about this, which prompted the interview I am sharing with you today. Bill is a renowned Canadian economist and former chairman of the Economic and Development Review Committee at the OECD. He has served at the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, and he is a long-time favorite speaker at our Strategic Investment Conference.

Bill and I share similar concerns about an extended era of both higher inflation and higher interest rates—perhaps not high from a long-term perspective, but certainly higher than we’ve grown accustomed to. Bill sees us moving from an age of plenty, which he pegs as roughly 1990 to 2020, to an age of scarcity. In our interview, he walks through the five key macroeconomic factors driving this shift.

These are big-picture issues that virtually no one in Washington is discussing, and Bill proposes some solutions that are bound to be unpopular, including higher taxes. Nevertheless, these are critical conversations. As Bill puts it, “We're in a war to preserve our market-based, capitalist, democratic system in an environment that is going to be very, very difficult to navigate.”

In our interview, you will also hear about:

My dinner table discussion with the former mayor of Miami

How complex systems like the US economy unravel

Bill’s thoughts on the national debt crisis

How to navigate what Bill calls the “guns and butter” problem

Watch my interview with Bill White by clicking the image above. A full transcript of our conversation is available here.

Thanks for reading and watching.

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