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

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 to a great extent power follows money. In The End of Influence, renowned economic analysts Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong explore the grave consequences this loss will have for America’s 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 and potentially long-lasting but little-noted consequences of our great fiscal crisis.

Stephen S. Cohen is a professor in the Graduate School and co-director of BRIE (the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy) at the University of California, Berkeley, and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. He lives in San Francisco.

J. Bradford DeLong is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He also writes the widely read economics blog Brad DeLong’s Semi-Daily Journal. He lives in Berkeley.