Among the many factors that make a return to halcyon days of the first decades of the postwar era virtually impossible is the decline of clearly defined political leadership.

The historical record suggests that the transition to to a new hegemon has always been attended by what I have elsewhere called hegemonic war.

A market is not politically neutral; its existence creates economic power which one actor can use against another.

The world economy diffuses rather than concentrates wealth.

Many critics see international trade as a form of cultural imperialism that must be strictly controlled.

The multinational corporation and international production reflect a world in which capital and technology have become increasingly mobile, while labor has remained relatively immobile.

In the abstract world of American economists, equations run both ways; they believe that by changing the sign of a variable from plus to minus or from minus to plus or the price and quantity of x or y, the direction of historical movement can be reversed.