Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Nouriel Roubini, John Murray, $34.99.
From the economist who predicted the 2008 crash, Megathreats outlines the new risks in our uncharted future, and how we deal with them.
In 2006, Nouriel Roubini saw stratospheric prices of houses, dangerous levels of mortgage debt and overbuilding. New houses went begging for buyers. He warned that a historic bubble would soon burst and precipitate a global recession and financial crisis.
Risks and threats lurk everywhere, but Roubini draws our attention to the biggest threats we face on our planet. He calls them ‘megathreats’ which he defines as severe problems that cause vast damage and misery and cannot be solved quickly or easily.
Threats that concern the author are broad economic, financial, political, geopolitical, trade, technological, health, and climate-based challenges.
“I wrote this book because I believe we are facing ten of them, of such immense scale and urgency that we need to look ahead with clear vision and do what we can to prevent them from destroying us.”
The world has seen a long stretch of rising wealth, prosperity, peace and productivity, apart from a handful of interruptions since World War II. For the past 75 years, we have enjoyed relative stability. However, that constancy is about to change.
“We are facing a regime change from a period of relative stability to an era of severe instability, conflict, and chaos. We are facing megathreats unlike anything we have faced before – and they are interconnected.”
We face all kinds of risk every day. We have to learn to live on high alert.
This book explores the key megathreats bearing down on us. There is a slight chance we can avoid it, if we come to our senses – but we must act now. We have been cautioned.
