Cheap money will boost inequality and geopolitical tension but not inflation

Though the lockdown in 2020 threw many workers out of work, the big fiscal stimulus, fueled by government debt and an unprecedentedly large monetary expansion, offered stimulus checks and elevated unemployment benefits to millions of Americans. In 2020, US federal spending grew by 50 percent, making the deficit share of GDP the largest since 1945, and the M2 in the economy grew by 26 percent—the largest annual increase since 1943. Such fiscal and monetary expansion prevented a collapse in consumption. After an initial fall in Spring 2020, US household consumption bounced back and grew by more than 40 percent in the third quarter.

Revisiting imperialism

Ho-fung Hung investigates the role of economic development in state formation and global power, with a specific focus on China and East Asia. In his 2015 book The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World, he argues that despite predictions that China's growth would fundamentally challenge the prevailing power relations between the East and West, the nation continues to depend on the existing global order—in a system maintained by the interests of Chinese elites. Hung's 2011 book Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots, and Petitions in the Mid-Qing Dynasty examines over one thousand protest actions in China over the 18th and 19th century, looking at the state and market conditions that catalyzed petitions, rallies, riots, market strikes as forms of popular protest, and ultimately challenging the dominant narrative of dissent as tied to Western political thought.

Hung currently serves as the Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Professor in Political Economy at the Sociology Department and the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University.