James Laxer’s Beyond the Bubble: Imagining a New Canadian Economy is one of many analyses now appearing of the global financial crisis of 2008–09. Indeed, the publication of books on this topic is one of the first economic activities to show real signs of significant growth after the crash. Unlike the others, however, this book has the virtue for Canadians of analyzing the crisis and its implications for our own country.
The bulk of Laxer’s analysis focuses on the consequences of the global crisis rather than its causes. He presents two broad arguments. The first is that the crisis signals the end of an “American-centred age of globalization.” The second is that the crisis has generated both the need and the possibility for quite a new direction for Canadian economic policy. Both arguments are presented in Laxer’s characteristically lively writing style and with a useful mix of historical analysis and political economy. Each is also provocative enough that...
Eric Helleiner is CIGI Chair of International Political Economy and a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. He is co-editor of The Future of the Dollar (Cornell University Press, 2009) and Global Finance in Crisis: The Politics of International Regulatory Change (Routledge, 2010).
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