There’s a ‘Doom Loop’ at the Heart of the Global Economy

From Bloomberg

When Eswar Prasad sat down in late 2024 to review the draft for his new book, he worried it was too dark. But the outcome of the US presidential election and the shock waves that followed convinced him that, if anything, the initial take wasn’t dark enough. He doubled down on the thesis.

In The Doom Loop: Why the World Economic Order Is Spiraling into Disorder (Basic Venture, Feb. 3, 2026) the economist takes on a well-established theme — that the world economy is experiencing tumult — and pairs a sweeping read of world events with a simple thesis. More competition in the zero-sum world of geopolitics is turning traditional engines of cooperation like trade into new sources of conflict and instability. As power-hungry elites cling ever more tightly to their perches, populist politics grow stronger and the system destabilizes even further. That’s the doom loop.