Legacy

Abstract

When Barack Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, America’s relative position in the world had declined. There was little doubt as to its predominant power, but the social legitimacy of its economic model was now questioned, criticized, and even challenged. The power was still there. However, its foundations had been shaken. In September 2008, the United States had been struck by a terrible and unexpected financial crisis, the shock of which allowed candidate Obama to take the lead over his Republican rival in the presidential race.¹ Aside from damaging the American and then the global economy in a matter of weeks, the subprime crisis called into question the legitimacy of the American financial capitalism and its underlying deregulatory logic dating back to the 1990s. The German finance minister at the time predicted that the United States was going to lose its “superpower status in the global financial system,” resulting in the emergence of a multipolar system where the dollar would lose its predominance to the benefit of the euro, yen, and yuan.² A British political analyst was even more categorical in his assessment that “the era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over.”³ The governor of the Central Bank of China subtly echoed these statements in March 2009 by contending for the first time that the dollar’s role as reserve currency presented more drawbacks than advantages.⁴