The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy!

The David McWilliams Podcast

David McWilliams

News & Politics

4.5 • 692 Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2026

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode is a deep dive into a simple claim: This is the year the mask slipped. The United States has decided that the grand bargain it presided over since 1945 is finished, and the consequences are immediate for markets, alliances, and Europe’s security. We begin in Japan, where a sharp move in long-term government bond yields is forcing a rethink of the global carry trade, and shaking risk assets worldwide. Then we go to Davos, where Mark Carney frames the moment as a “rupture, not a transition,” arguing that integration has become a weapon: tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities. We unpack the post-war deal: America as global policeman, underwriting security in Europe and East Asia, and what America got in return. Then we examine the new reality: tariffs on allies, closeness to rivals, and a Europe that may no longer accept subordination, with Greenland/“the Battle of Nuuk” emerging as the flashpoint that could make the break irreversible. Part one ends with the biggest question of all: if the unipolar world is over, what replaces it? Part two next week looks at Ireland, a country with a profound vested interest in the status quo, now facing its end.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Today's podcast, and it is maybe the most crucial one that we've done in a long time,
0:04.3	is on the world has changed, 26, the end of the Great American Bargain, the end of Pax Americana,
0:13.6	the beginning of European rearmament, and the final week of January, 26, is the time that the world stood still and changed and we're going
0:26.0	into a brave new world and it may not necessarily be half as comfortable, half as stable and
0:32.1	half of prosperous as the one we've come out of. It's all a couple of minutes. Just before we start, lecture three
0:38.8	of our monthly economic course is out on Friday, and it is ironically, given what's going on in
0:43.2	the world, about the glory of free trade, of money, of how money is second nature to humans,
0:50.3	and how using money we have opened up the world via trade and we have innovated and we have collaborated at scale.
0:57.7	Maybe Donny J should do a few lessons.
1:00.8	It's free to Patrions.
1:02.4	And if you want to join us, join us on patreon.com
1:06.0	forward slash David MacWilliams if you are not yet signed up.
1:11.4	To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature.
1:17.6	This podcast is powered by ACAST.
1:23.8	How you're doing there?
1:25.1	It is podcast time and what a time to be looking at the global economy,
1:31.5	to be looking at global politics, to be looking at the end of the American Empire,
1:37.2	ironically at their own choice. Seeing how does this end, we're going to start in Davos,
1:44.7	we're going to look at Mark Carney's speech. We're going to start in Davos. We're going to look at Mark Carney's speech.
1:47.0	We're going to examine Trump's body language, if nothing else.
1:52.5	But also we're going to put it into the context of we are now without a shadow of
1:57.6	a doubt coming to the end of something.
	...

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