The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money

Two award-winning economists detail how America’s declining economic power will reshape its place on the world stage.

“A brilliant short tour of the rise and fall of the neoliberal project on an international basis.” —Matthew Yglesias

At the end of World War II, the United States had all the money and all the power. Now, America finds itself cash poor—and power follows money. In The End of Influence, renowned economic analysts Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong explore the grave consequences of America’s massive national debt for its place in the world.

America, Cohen and DeLong argue, will no longer be the world’s hyperpower. It will no longer wield soft cultural power or dictate a monolithic foreign policy. More damaging, though, is the blow to the world’s ability to innovate economically, financially, and politically. Cohen and DeLong also explore American’s complicated relationship with China, the misunderstood role of sovereign wealth funds, and the return of state-led capitalism.

An essential read for anyone interested in how global economics and finance interact with national policy, The End of Influence explains the far-reaching consequences of our great fiscal crisis.

Stephen S. Cohen is a Professor Emeritus of Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, and Codirector of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy. He lives in New York City.

J. Bradford DeLong, an economic historian, is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of the bestselling book Slouching Towards Utopia. He was a deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury during the Clinton administration. He writes a widely read economics blog, now at braddelong.substack.com. He lives in Berkeley, California.