Bread-and-butter local issues threaten to derail the global economy | Michael Boskin

Leaders must focus on domestic matters in 2019 to solve world problems such as trade and climate change

For many of the world's economies, financial markets, heads of government, and carbon policies, 2018 did not end well. The scars of the global financial crisis, combined with longer-term structural economic, technological, cultural, and demographic trends, have left large swaths of the population in many countries feeling politically neglected, culturally disparaged, and/or economically wounded. And their expression of their grievances - at the polls, on the internet, and in the streets - has left their leaders profoundly weakened.

In Germany, the four-term chancellor Angela Merkel has long acted as the European Union's de facto leader. Then came her fateful 2015 decision to welcome more than 1 million refugees into Germany. The backlash - fuelled by frustration with the added pressure on public services, finances and law enforcement, not to mention political fearmongering - left Merkel so wounded that she did not seek re-election as leader of her party this month and will not stand for re-election as chancellor after her current term expires in 2021.

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