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1 IntroductionThe most important aspect of any new understanding is whether it empowers people to do things which could not be done previously.Shimomuran-Wernerian macroeconomics is just such an understanding, becauseIt empowers governments, in co-operation with the energies of their people, rapidly to increase the rate of economic growth by co-ordinated actionIt creates widespread prosperity of the people of a country by creating a high-growth economic miracle and producing within a few decades a more fully developed modern economy which laissez-faire economics has taken centuries to produceIt enables, through capital abundance, the more rapid resolution of major world problems such as poverty, global warming, and inadequate social provision and infrastructureIt ignites the inventive and innovative capabilities of mankind wherever it is fully practicedIt leads to a world of "abundant capital" and may be the key to the starsBUTIt requires that all governments act in the interests of all their people and not mainly for their ruling class or monied elite (which is mainly what they do in the West)It requires long-term, creative and competent governments to act altruistically (as the greatest geniuses of the human race have usually done) both within their economy and internationallyIt requires major international co-operation to avoid the runaway disasters which can result as a largely unintended side effect of high economic growth and new understandingsIn short, greater economic understanding requires governments to exercise greater responsibility and higher practical knowledge with altruism, in a co-ordinated international approach to deal with major world problems competently and constructively.This is more fully set out below.1.1 Definition of The Three Major Dimensions Of Wernerian-Shimomuran MacroeconomicsThere are three major dimensions to that new understanding, because it is:A realistic, practical economics based upon a detailed, meticulous historical observation of the recorded resulting higher economic growth in a dozen locationsBased upon parts of the writings of the six major master economists (Wang Anshi (1021-1086), John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), Joseph A Schumpeter (1883-1950) Dr Osamu Shimomura (1910-89), Kenneth K Kurihara (1910-72), and Richard Werner (1967-? )An inclusive system of interlocking policies reflecting the more complete range of policy options available to governments, andA recognition of the position of individual invention and the role of Small Business Enterprise innovations as the major source of future economic development in all economies.So this Shimomuran-Wernerian macroeconomics is a realistic understanding, belonging to the German Historical school of economics, and is a complete system, not only founded upon the capability of the central bank of a nation to create credit but encompassing all the ways that credit can be focused, allocated and used, and acknowledges and includes the role of Schumpeterian invention and innovation in SMEs as the source of economic progress in all economies. Like this:https://georgetaitedwards.quora.com/The-Most-Successful-Economic-Policy-Of-All-Time-The-German-Historical-Economics-Development-of-Shimomuran-Wernerian1.2 CaveatsThe following paragraphs set out the major historical observations, and briefly indicates the role of master economists in explaining these, the range of policy options this new economics makes possible, and the local sources of invention and innovation as illustrated by history.Finally the rise of China and the new possibilities for effective international action to upgrade the world's future is suggested.The range of this discussion is inevitably incomplete due to the scale of the issues under consideration.The reader is invited to dig deeper into the quoted sources and elsewhere to examine the foundations of this essay. I may quote wherever possible the best book I know about each particular economic miracle, but many such texts may exist, often not in English.This essay is a result of my ongoing studies at the University of Southampton where the agreed focus of my research is "the integration of Shimomuran macroeconomics with Wernerian macroeconomics." It is a "story so far" rather than a “final definitive text" which I hope to produce to the best of my ability within a further two years or so.Eight previous attempts partially to answer this question are atGeorge Tait Edwards's answer to What should everyone know about Japanese history?George Tait Edwards's answer to What did China get right in its economic and social development which the US got wrong?George Tait Edwards's answer to What kind of economic system does modern China use and how does it differ from the modern US economy?George Tait Edwards's answer to What makes a GDP grow high or stay high?https://www.quora.com/Is-China-the-best-example-of-world-economic-growth/answer/George-Tait-Edwardshttps://www.quora.com/How-is-the-future-of-economics/answer/George-Tait-Edwardshttps://www.quora.com/What-is-Shimomuran-economics/answer/George-Tait-Edwardshttps://www.quora.com/What-is-the-hypothetical-scenario-of-the-highest-possible-world-GDP/answer/George-Tait-EdwardsI have stopped at eight articles but there are seven relevant books and over 350 relevant articles, with perhaps another three or four books and a hundred articles on the way.1.3 The Insight of Kurt Godel (1906-1978)Perhaps the greatest insight of Kurt Godel was that all intellectual systems are either inconsistent or incomplete.See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Gödel#Incompleteness_TheoremExperience shows repeatedly that historical reality often produces unintended consequences, particularly when the elite of any country rule that nation only in their interests. Those who do not learn the difficult, sometimes negative but often positive lessons of economic history are usually condemned to play a smaller part in it in future. As Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord observed"History teaches nothing, only punishes those who do not learn its lessons."After over 46 years of private economic research by me and often others, I am keenly aware of the occasional inconsistencies and continuing incompleteness of my understandings. All research covers a continually widening range and is inevitably incomplete particularly when it is summarised.1.4 Why is this Macroeconomics called Shimomuran-Wernerian?This new economics is Shimomuran - because it is based upon the no-cost investment credit creation policies explained by Dr Osamu Shimomura (1910–1989) and practised to produce the economic miracles in the Tokyo Consensus Zone economies (Japan,South Korea,Taiwan and China) and Wernerian because“The prime requirement for continual economic development is the existence of a local (preferably public) banking system which funds the establishment, development and growth of the SMEs which are everywhere the source of the continual invention, innovation, most employment, and better living standards on which economic development depends.” That’s the central theme of Wernerian macroeconomics. Only Germany and to a lesser extent China has such a system. SeeWhat makes a GDP grow high or stay high? andGerman public bank - Wikipedia”and see George Tait Edwards's answer to Is Democracy a prerequisite for economic growth or is economic growth a prerequisite for Democracy? where the above quote originates.2 The Historical Evidence About Economic DevelopmentThis section will list the twelve major historical economic miracles and will encapsulate these tremendous events in very few words. The interested reader is invited to dig deeper into the references quoted and other sources to discover the ever-widening context of the reality of these economic miracles.Modern Western macroeconomics generally does not recognise the importance of the banking systems and money and the use of credit and promissory notes in the process of bringing about rapid economic development. Since money and credit (and all banknotes are promissory notes) is central to the production of economic miracles, there is a hole at the heart of modern Western economics. Major surgery is required to place money and particularly investment credit creation at the heart of Western economic understanding where it belongs.2.1 The First Industrial Revolution in the Song and Ming Chinese EmpiresAfter the Chinese invention of paper money in the 9th century, the Chinese economy exploded into a fuller employment mass production economy in the 11th century Song Empire under the Prime Minister of Wang Anshi and his friend the Emperor Shenzong. See part 2 ofhttps://www.quora.com/What-are-major-Chinese-innovations/answer/George-Tait-EdwardsWhere the role of Wang Anshi is more fully set out. And see the Wikipedia entry on the Song Dynasty (960-1279) atEconomy of the Song dynasty - Wikipediawhich begins"For over three centuries during the Song dynasty (960–1279) China experienced sustained growth in per capita income and population, structural change in the economy, and increased pace of technological innovation. Movable print, improved seeds for rice and other commercial crops, gunpowder, water-powered mechanical clocks, the use of coal as a source of fuel for a variety of industries, improved techniques for iron and steel production, pound locks and many other technological innovations transformed the economy. In north China, the main fuel source for ceramic kilns and iron furnaces shifted from wood to coal.During the Song dynasty, there was also a notable increase in commercial contacts with global markets. Merchants engaged in overseas trade through investments in trading vessels and trade which reached ports as far away as East Africa. This period also witnessed the development of the world's first banknote, or printed paper money (see Jiaozi, Guanzi, Huizi), which circulated on a massive scale. Combined with a unified tax system and efficient trade routes by road and canal, this meant the development of a truly nationwide market. Regional specialization promoted economic efficiency and increased productivity. Although much of the central government's treasury went to the military, taxes imposed on the rising commercial base refilled the coffers and further encouraged the monetary economy.[1] Reformers and conservatives debated the role of government in the economy. The emperor and his government still took responsibility for the economy, but generally made fewer claims than in earlier dynasties. The government did, however, continue to enforce monopolies on certain manufactured items and market goods to boost revenues and secure resources that were vital to the empire's security, such as tea, salt, and chemical components for gunpowder.These changes made China a global leader, leading some historians to call this an "early modern" economy many centuries before Western Europe made its breakthrough. Many of these economic gains were lost, however, in the succeeding Yuan dynasty."The Mongols had no idea about how to use created credit for positive productive purposes but created credit for their own consumption and produced the massive inflation which partly led to the fall of their Chinese dynasty. The Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) refused to allow the Han Chinese to learn Mongolian and their major (or minor) legacy to Chinese culture is in the name now given to Chinese currency. Ashttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_dynasty puts it"Explanations for the demise of the Yuan include institutionalized ethnic discrimination against Han Chinese that stirred resentment and rebellion, overtaxation of areas hard-hit by inflation, and massive flooding of the Yellow River as a result of the abandonment of irrigation projects.[8]"The succeeding Great Ming Empire (1358-1644) understood productive credit creation during the years of the Ming Treasure voyages (1405-1433). SeeMing treasure voyages - WikipediaThe rise of the elite-serving Conservatives in China led to the contraction of the Ming Empire after the death of the Yongle Emperor in 1424. And as I say at"As The Ming Voyages | Asia for Educators | Columbia University records under the heading “The Fateful Decision”“The Ming court was divided into many factions, most sharply into the pro-expansionist voices led by the powerful eunuch factions that had been responsible for the policies supporting Zheng Ho's voyages, and more traditional conservative Confucian court advisers who argued for frugality. When another seafaring voyage was suggested to the court in 1477, the vice president of the Ministry of War confiscated all of Zheng He's records in the archives, damning them as "deceitful exaggerations of bizarre things far removed from the testimony of people's eyes and ears." He argued that "the expeditions of San Bao [meaning "Three Jewels," as Zheng He was called] to the West Ocean wasted tens of myriads of money and grain and moreover the people who met their deaths may be counted in the myriads. Although he returned with wonderful precious things, what benefit was it to the state?"Linked to eunuch politics and wasteful policies, the voyages were over. By the century's end, ships could not be built with more than two masts, and in 1525 the government ordered the destruction of all oceangoing ships. The greatest navy in history, which once had 3,500 ships (the U.S. Navy today has only 324), was gone.”The Great Zheng He Fleets could have formed the foundation of the Sea Silk Road covering almost precisely the same sea “road” routes of the modern OBOR development. China had the option of becoming the world-leading hegemony based on its industrial strength and the high levels of wealth and welfare of its people soundly based upon the towering levels of invention and innovation in its people. The dominance of China's Conservatives resulted in the destruction of their great navy and Chinese decline."That history has recently repeated itself in the decline of the UK navy, once the most powerful in the world, under "Conservative" policies and the reduction in funding of the US Navy under the the Republicans. And in the decline of the British and American hegemonies in the 20th century which accelerated after 1980 when, under Thatcher and Reagan leadership, rule for the benefit of the rich was installed in both of these countries.2.2 The Dutch as a Major Colonial PowerThe small country of Holland (now known as the Netherlands) became a major world power through the creation of credit targeted at funding overseas shipping ventures to trade and colonise many locations all over the world.What the Dutch did is one of the least well recorded triumphs of the successful use of investment credit creation in the foundation of a vast Empire. Because the victors write the histories, the place of the Dutch Empire and its enormous success is either ignored or more usually relegated to a footnote of most Westernised world history books written in English. But see the Wikipedia entry athttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Empirewhich does quote 98 sources and 16 books. (The Wikipedia entry on the now defunct larger British Empire, for comparison, quotes 247 sources and hundreds of book references.)One exception to the above comment is the recent book by Noah Harari which describes the Dutch Empire and its enabling major company, on pages 359-363, which begins with"The Netherlands was a small and windy swamp, devoid of natural resources, a small corner of the King of Spain's dominions." and on the same page"The secret of Dutch success was credit." And on the next page:"Financiers extended the Dutch enough credit to set up armies and fleets and these armies and fleets gave the Dutch the control world trade routes which yielded handsome profits."See Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, Penguin Random House,London 2011.2.3 Three of the The American Colonies Three of the original colonies of what became the USA - Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina - grew to be very prosperous on the back of the slave trade which was founded on the basis of Tobacco Lord promissory notes. These notes, monetised in relation to pounds of tobacco and backed by the provision of goods in the 125 Tobacco Lord shops, became the most stable alternative currency in these colonies. These IOUs cost the Tobacco Lords nothing to create yet the use of these notes as currency - to buy slaves, wives, settle debts, act as a store of value and medium of exchange - was the major reason for the immense early development of these three colonies. I have not yet researched this issue adequately, but a paper on this issue is the first in my PhD and I cannot publish here the results so far of my researches without prejudicing my academic studies.One of the major driving factors behind the American Declaration of Independence might have been the wish of at least two the signatories of that document to repudiate Tobacco Lord loans. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had large tobacco farms with loans to match.In much of history there is often the political cover story imbued with high ideals and a more financial foundation of the advantage conferred to individuals or groups by legal or constitutional changes. So it is with the USA. Of course, the US historians do not wish their founding fathers to be besmirched, as they may see it, by money motives. But whatever the motivational foundation of the brilliantly written US Declaration of Independence, the financial facts are beyond dispute.The repudiation of the Tobacco Lord loans was a great advantage to the largest tobacco farmers but it ruined the tobacco industry for the majority of its farmers. It is often thus.2.4 The First Western Industrial Revolution In Scotland 1700-1800 The Tobacco Lords used their money to establish the first banks in Scotland, led by the almost undocumented Murdoch Bank in Glasgow in 1730, and to fund the early ground-breaking commercial companies in Scotland. A complete list of all of these companies may be difficult to determine, but the data in Tom Devine's book has provided me with this list:Source: Calculated by me from:And see The Scottish Industrial Revolution, or The Scottish First Industrial Miracle 1700–18002.5 The English Industrial Revolution 1750-1880 The earliest part of the English industrial revolution was the smuggling prior to 1750 of a large amount of hogsheads of tobacco into Scotland via Whitehaven in the English Lake District (now called Cumbria).The English Industrial revolution was driven by three major circumstancesthe massive inventiveness of the Scots, who for centuries had (and still have) a much better educational system than that of England and Wales and which led to the development by James Watt of a much more effective (six times more efficient) steam engine, which was the major driver of the first (steam engine) and second (railway era) Kondriatieff Cyclesthe permissive parliamentary framework of new local "Country Bank" creation as illustrated by the fact that there were 116 Country Bankers who were Members of Parliament- see pages 179-82 of Volume 2 of Country Banks of England and Wales, Privatre Provincial Banks and Bankers, 1688-1933, Margaret Dawes and CN Ward-Perkins, which names the MPs and the town banks in which they were involved. Here's page 179 naming some of these MP bankers:the easy creation by industrialists of local private SME-supporting "Country Banks of England and Wales" which provided the funding of local invention and its conversion to factory-floor innovation by means of an 1810 Stamp Office License (costing £20) "Banker's Licence in England" purchased at the Post OfficeSource: R.M Fitzmaurice, British Banks And Banking.a pictorial history, D Bradford Barton Ltd, Truro,Cornwall, 1975, p55.Any company wishing to issue its own banknotes could pay £20 for that privilege and could legally do so. It is a sobering reflection that this system led to Britain becoming the workshop of the world due to the local funding of local industry. No such system exists today - the restrictive legal requirements imposed by the BoE prevent any such banks now being founded in England.Where the local Country Banks of England and Wales were located looks like this:Source: Margaret Dawes and C N Ward-Perkins, Op. Cit., p 12. For a list of defunct banks in the United Kingdom seeCategory:Defunct banks of the United Kingdom - WikipediaA modern map of major “English”banks would show five dots in London. The decline of the UK is intimately linked to the lack of local financial support for small SMEs. The last "Country" (or Provincial) bank in Scotland, the Airdrie Savings Bank (1835-2017) was shut down partly due to (BoE) "increasing cost of regulation."See Airdrie Savings Bank - WikipediaSME-supporting Savings Bank legislation is positive and helpful to German public savings banks but wholly negative in the UK where the BoE supports the Clearing Banks. The Scots under the 1996 LA reorganisation have established eleven Municipal Banks in Scotland. SeeMunicipal bankingThese municipal banks are located in Airdrie, Bellshill and Coatbridge (where the late Airdrie Bank had branches and previously operated) and in Cumbernauld, Kilsyth, Moodlesburn, Motherwell, Norh Lanarkshire, Shotts, Viewpark, and Wishaw and these banks cover the Glasgow-centred area of major operation of the previous Glaswegian Tobacco Lords. This may be a coincidence, but maybe not.The later inventions of the Scots includedthe electromagnetic understandings of James Clerk Maxwell which led to the the third Kondratieff cycle of electrical power provision and generation (and Westinghouse/Tesla AC distribution in the USA)the invention of television by James Baird (and his early experiments with radar)the invention of the telephone by the Scottish-Born James Bell and the massive telecommunications industries based upon that.2.6 Germany 1778 and 1802-2018Probably from observation of how local banks in Great Britain stimulated local SME development, Germany's Sparkassen public banking system was set up and grew in independent public bank numbers from 630 in 1850 to 2,834 in 1903. As Wikipedia reports athttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_public_bank"The first savings banks in Germany were founded at the beginning of the 18th century in its major trading cities. One of the first institutions with the business model of modern savings banks was the Ersparungscasse der Hamburgischen Allgemeinen Versorgungsanstalt in Hamburg in 1778. Founders were rich merchants, clerks and academics. They intended to develop solutions for people with low income to save small sums of money and to support business start-ups.[14] In 1801 the first savings bank with a municipal guarantor was founded in Göttingen to fight poverty.[15] Between 1850 and 1903 the idea of the municipal savings banks spread and the number of savings banks in Germany increased from 630 to 2834.[16] Fulfilling public interests is still one of the most significant characteristics of public banks in general and the savings banks in particular."These purposes continue to be delivered to the present day, and although the number of Sparkassen Savings Banks has fallen to 431 the number of bank branches has grown to 15,600.The German Sparkassen Banking system is the most effective in the world at funding the establishment and growth of German SME industry.Here’s where these 431 banks and 15,600 branches are located in Germany:And they have produced the result thatAnd Hermann Kahn, a German author, has suggested that result is produced because Germany has about 50% of the “Hidden Champions”in the world:See Hermann Simon, Hidden Champions of the 21st Century, atThe Success Strategies of Unknown World Market Leaders: Amazon.co.uk: Hermann Simon: 9780387981468: BooksBecause Germany understands and practices a Sparkassen Public Banking System which encourages invention and its conversion to factory-floor innovation, Germany dominates the EU. But Germany’s “Hidden Champions” only grow to medium size. Germany does not practice Shimomuran economics, so many of its best champions become continental leaders within the EU but not world champions.In 1985 I tried to interest the German politicians in Shimomuran macroeconomics. One representative of the Anglo-German Foundation advised me then that Germany had no need of any Asian understanding of how to facilitate higher economic growth.2.7- 2.12 Other Economic MiraclesThe followIng economic miracles have been briefly covered atGeorge Tait Edwards's answer to What should everyone know about Japanese history? and athttps://georgetaitedwards.quora.com/The-Most-Successful-Economic-Policy-Of-All-Time-The-German-Historical-Economics-Development-of-Shimomuran-Wernerianalso quoted above.The circumstances of these economic miracles are therefore mentioned as relevant but not repeated in detail here. Relevant books are listed in the sources, except for these by Alice Hoffenberg Amsden (1943-2012) who authored one major book and co-authored another as listed at 2.10 and 2.11 below2.7 The South Manchurian Railway Company 1905-19452.8 FDR's Economic Miracle 1938-442.9 The Japanese Economic Miracle 1945-52 and 1953-732.10 The South Korean Economic Miracle 1960-80 (also see the brilliant book by Alice Hoffenberg Amsden (1943-2012) See Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization, Oxford University Press, 1989.2.11 The Taiwanese Economic Miracle - also see Alice Amsden's book Beyond Late Development: Taiwan's Upgrading Policies, MIT Press, 2003, (with Wan Wen Chu).2.12 The Chinese Economic Miracle 1975-2018 See http://londonprogressivejournal.com/article/view/1620/the-historical-backdrop-to-the-third-economic-bomb-a-brief-guide-to-early-chinese-history-the-land-and-the-people-and-the-first-emperorand A Brief Guide To Early Chinese History: The Mongol Conquest Of China And Its Consequencesand China’s All-Inclusive Economic Miracle: The Third Economic BombParticularly from the section beginning“Chinese ICC development is more complete and on a broader front than Japan’s”which states that“The Chinese have used and are using Shimomuran economics to transform every aspect of China’s economy, given that the national income of a country is the sum of consumer, investment and government expenditure. The successive Chinese Governments have sought to maximise consumer, investment and government expenditure within achievable limits, and to increase each demand sector by the highest amount each year. That policy is entirely different from the Japanese Shimomuran policy of focused industrial growth (or “Economic Growth First”) based upon private-growth company-centred (eg machine tools, shipping) and consumer-goods-centred development for the sake of acquiring a trading advantage. The Chinese development focus is on the full development of all sectors of the economy, increasing the investment capacity of the country to provide for higher consumer demand, better housing, and higher government expenditure. Planning is on a giant and unprecedented scale - not only city construction but city-copying in China - and nothing required for the better functioning of the economy is left out of that development.Official Chinese data does not fully reflect the level of Chinese investment. As the CIA World Factbook comments:“official data; data cover both central government debt and local government debt, which China's National Audit Office estimated at RMB 10.72 trillion (approximately US$1.66 trillion) in 2011; data exclude policy bank bonds, Ministry of Railway debt, China Asset Management Company debt, and non-performing loans.”’and George Tait Edwards's answer to Why is China more outstanding in its economic growth than a having political figures like in Europe and the US?3 Brief Comments on The Significance of Six Major Economists3.1 Wang Anshi (1021-1086)Wang Anshi was the first investment credit economist whose understandings enabled the economic miracles of the Song and Ming Empires. SeeGeorge Tait Edwards's answer to How did Wang Anshi contribute to the economic world?and note the role of Wang Anshi as set out in Section 2.1 above3.2 John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)John Maynard Keynes in his writings produced the three major insights which are the foundation of investment credit economics.The first is in what is usually called the General Theory.“While there are intrinsic reasons for the shortage of land, there are no intrinsic reasons for the shortage of capital” (Book 6, Chapter 24, Section 2, p. 376).The second great insight was his statement that savings can be created to fund investment prior to the returns which justify them.And the third is that“Central Banks can purchase no-debt assets by making claims against themselves - In the “Tract on Monetary Reform”, Keynes recognised that a Central Bank “may itself purchase assets, i.e. add to its investments, and pay for them, in the first instance at least, by establishing a claim against itself” (Keynes, 1923).”See Shimomuran Economics and the Rise of Japan and ChinaKeynes did not see the possibility that the Central Bank could create vast flows of investment credit annually, canalising that credit to enterprises through local banks and producing very high rates of economic growth. The Asian Keynesian who became the Asian Keynes - Dr Osamu Shimomura - made that observation the central pillar of his explanation about how to produce higher investment and growth in his Economic Model of the Japanese Economy.3.3 Joseph A Schumpeter (1883-1950)As Joseph Schumpeter - Wikipedia comments“Schumpeter identified innovation as the critical dimension of economic change.[35] He argued that economic change revolves around innovation, entrepreneurial activities, and market power. He sought to prove that innovation-originated market power can provide better results than the invisible hand and price competition. He argued that technological innovation often creates temporary monopolies, allowing abnormal profits that would soon be competed away by rivals and imitators.”Schumpeter made the crucial distinction between the inventor and the innovator, who took that invention to the factory floor and sold the products.3.4 Dr Osamu Shimomura (1910-89)I have written so much about this master economist that I find it difficult to select relevant published articles, because my books are best. But seeThe Master Economist – George Tait Edwards – Mediumand the Gresham College slides athttps://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/content.gresham.ac.uk/data/binary/260/03mar15longfinance_georgetaitedwardsfinal.pdfandhttp://londonprogressivejournal.com/article/view/1566/the-origin-of-shimomuras-japanese-economic-miracle-or-the-second-economic-bomb-japan-from-to-economic-miracles-partandDr Osamu Shimomura (1910–89) — His Major AchievementsandShimomuran Economics is the Most Significant Advance Ever Made in Economic Understanding and the…3.5 Kenneth K Kurihara (1910-72)Kenneth Kenkichi Kurihara was born in 1910 in Kuchan, Hokkaido, Japan but immigrated to the USA where he worked for the US Government, became a noted growth economist and in turn Professor of Economics at Princeton University, Rutgers University and the State University of New York. SeeKenneth K. Kurihara - WikipediaHis insights into how Shimomuran macroeconomics propelled the rapid development of Japan were largely ignored by US and Western economists. Seehttps://medium.com/@georgetaitedwards/the-key-relevance-of-the-writings-of-professor-kenneth-kenkichi-kurihara-the-world-expert-on-high-99d1f80e1733. 6 Richard Werner (1967-? ) Richard Werner has not simply postulated that increases in investment credit cause economic growth, he has used the recently invented technique of Granger Predictive Causation analysis to show that annual increases in investment credit at the Bank of Japan is a leading “Granger Predictive Indicator” of subsequent Japanese economic growth. And he has used the same technique of Granger Predictive Causation analysis to show that increases in speculative credit at the Bank of Japan is a leading “Granger Predictive Indicator” of subsequent asset bubble growth in Japan.4 The New Capabilities of China4.1 Large Capital Investment Projects The full practice of Shimomuran-Wernerian Macroeconomics enables very large and historically unprecedented capital investments successfully to be made. Of course, we can only clearly see the first of these, but there are many other potential international projects which can be Chinese led. Some of these projects are essential to the future of the world.4.2 The Associated Scientific Advantages Emerging from The Chinese and the World Rennaissance In addition to these greater capital projects, there are likely to be advances in scientific understanding that will have an immense significance. Some of these are part and parcel of the increased invention and innovation associated with higher local funding of SMEs, but still others will arise spontaneously as the boundless ingenuity of mankind and womankind becomes more activated.By their very nature, these developments are less forecastable. I think these might include the drug stimulation of intellectual development, much more effective mood control drugs, easier genetic modification techniques, and the improvement of the partly developed and developing researches of Professor David Andrew Sinclair about life extension and health improvement. I cannot fully cover all of these here.4.3 The Actual and Likely Very Large Capital Projects4.3.1 OBOR - a $5tr Project Over 5 YearsSee George Tait Edwards's answer to How will China's One Belt One Road influence urban development in Central Asia? andGeorge Tait Edwards's answer to What is it about the Chinese “One Belt, One Road” initiative (beside the economic aspect of it) that has a lot of European leaders critical of it? One said it threatens western liberalism, for example.There is no genuine comparison between the OBOR project (costing $5tr in all) and the Marshall Plan for the recovery of Europe which would cost about $160bn in current prices. OBOR is monumental: the Marshall Plan, while it was not trivial, was and is not really comparable in scale.OBOR will have a gigantic positive effect on the economies it connects.4.3.2 Reversing Global Warming - A more than $29tr Project over 30 yearsSee The Drawdown Project at DrawdownWhich is one of the best listings of the likely costings of reversing global warming is the list of approximately costed policies which estimate the extent of global CO2 reduction and the net benefits of eighty activities.4.3.3 Educating Willing Nations About Shimomuran-Wernerian Macroeconomics - a 30-year programme involving trillions of dollars a yearSee The Chinese have set up a New Structural Economics Department at Peking University under the…which contains the sentences“Needless to say, the Western media as usual has no idea about what is going on.I think the Chinese are going to get round to teaching the Rest of the World (RoW) about how to produce rapid economic growth and I’ve suggested I might possibly lecture there, if they’d have me.”I have so far had no response to my email to Mr P H Yu or from his two colleagues at Beijing University. Perhaps the Chinese during the 2010s are as self-confident about Shimomuran Macroeconomics as the Germans were during the 1980s about Sparkassen Banking economics. We’ll see.The current ($2017 PPP) best estimate of the GDP of the world is c$129 tr. Investment credit economics in the entire world requires CB credit creation of about 10% to 15% of GDP pa for decades. This will produce a final rise in finance of about 20% to 30% pa with the usual 14% to 20% fixed investment plus 6% to 10% of financial liquidity investment and an increase in government incomes of between 5% to 7% of GDP pa. World economic growth would initially increase by about 5% to 8% pa.But these are whole-world figures and what is most likely to happen is the faster development of particular countries.Subtext: The Menu of Economic ChoicesThere is a complex menu of political choices in Shimomuran-Wernerian Macroeconomics, both sets of options illustrated on two slides during the Gresham College lectures by me and by Professor Richard Werner. My presentation was headed asand contained Slide 19 which saidWhile Professor Richard Werner’s banner wasAnd his Slide 23 wasThese two slides briefly set out the available choices in the use of credit creation.4.3.3.1 Accelerating India’s Economic Growth RateThe indian Government has recently set up The National Instute For Transforming India, (NITI) headed by Amitabh Kant. That organisation has the objective of increasing India’s growth rate to 10% for the next thirty years.I have tried over several decades to interest India in increasing its rate of economic growth. SeeI agree that India needs to grow rapidly for decades in order to improve the prosperity of its…Maybe the Indians via the NITI are now looking for Answers. I do hope so.4.4 Leading Disaster Recovery - an ongoing $1 to $2tr tr project a YearThe deteriorating weather over much of the world - the emergence of very powerful hurricanes over 300 mile an hour winds in the Atlantic, and the historically unprecedented downpours of very large amounts of rainfall in a few hours in many locations in much of the world - is the natural result of global warming.I calculate about one to two trillion dollars worth a year of property damage is being caused outside the USA by that much worse weather.China could lead and partly fund an international disaster recovery programme, which is sorely needed by many nations.4.5 The Mars Project -Perhaps a $20tr project over 20 yearsThe Americans went to the moon. The Chinese are going to be able to afford to colonise Mars by setting up substantial numbers of colonists in the Martian tunnels.Astronauts previously were all damaged by radiation. Prior to the recent epigenetic advances of Professor David Andrew Sinclair a trip to Mars would kill the astronauts all of whom would be suffering from cancer on arrival.NASA has invested in these epigenetic researches so as to acquire a pill which will protect interplanetary travellers. But that’s not all it will do. See 5.1.1 below. And seeAnd the article is athttps://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/mars-organic-compounds-methane-curiosity-space-science/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=wildscience_20180618::rid=89305642155 The Chinese Renaissance and Likely New Technological Advances5.1 In Biochemistry5.1.1 The Epigenetic Control of the Aging Process and The Epigenetic Key to Interplanetary TravelThe only major government in the world which appears to be talking to David Andrew Sinclair is the Chinese Government. SeeThe Transition to the Long-Living Society Part 5 – George Tait Edwards – Medium particularly section 4.11 which points out:“Astronauts experience DNA damage in space that can lead to cancer and premature aging, so when news of the study began to circulate, NASA got in touch. Sinclair has another project now — “What we’ve been working on with the NASA scientists is to formulate the [NAD] pill for a journey to Mars,” Sinclair said.”At present, the radiation on a trip to Mars would kill the occupants of the spaceship, but Sinclair’s research is very likely to provide a survival pill for that journey, with profound implications for human life on Earth.And Section 4.2 says“4.2 ChinaThe most intelligent government in the world — the Chinese one — are in discussions with Prof Sinclair. The highest levels of the Chinese Government appear to be involved in these discussions, as Professor Sinclair reports atDavid Sinclair’s beginner’s guide to anti-ageing“In passing, he [David Andrew Sinclair] mentions he’s advising a large Asian nation (China, he clarifies after some questions) on how economic growth and a healthy population intersect.“This gets down to how do you transform the planet economically and not just [with] health,” he says.“The advice I’m giving that nation — and it’s at the highest level — they now want to know how do they raise up not just the economics, but the health [of their people]. Because they are very clever, they know [the two] have to go hand in hand.”If the Trump administration understood that principle, Obamacare would be extended and not reduced. If the British Government understood that principle, the underfunding of the NHS would cease. But these governments would also have to understand the Shimomuran Macroeconomics which makes such policies affordable and an assistance to growth.”5.1.2 The stimulation of intellectual capabilityThere are many drugs which improve the duration and often the intensity of intellectual endeavour. Most of these so-called "nootropics" do not have any proven effectiveness but a few seem to be effective.Drugs that are used to treat Alzheimers, for example, seem to reverse some of the outcomes of mental decline. Hydergine (or ergoloid mesylates) appears to work by reducing the increases in monamine oxidase (MAO) in the blood, where it assists cognitive impairment or recovery from a stroke. Side effects from Hydergine are minimal.Other substances which elevate dopamine and safely limit MAO appear to be effective. Pharmaceutical advances in this area are likely to have a major effect in future and will improve the basic level of inventiveness across the world.5.1.3 The "vital arts" - the genetic modification route to the futureGenetic modification of DNA will be one of the industries of the future. When frozen mammoths are again discovered in the Siberian ice, it may become possible for their cells to be implanted in and delivered by a female elephant. The repopulation of the Mammoth plains by herds of Alaskan elk, Sami reindeer and re-born mammoths could make a great contribution to global cooling. One image from the drawdown project shown below illustrates that possibility.5.1.4 The improved understanding of the electromagnetic foundation of gravityI think that should be possible.SeeGeorge Tait Edwards's answer to Can we use the scientific method to combine electromagnetic and gravitational forces into a unified field theory?6 My Caveats - The Downsides of Rapid Economic DevelopmentI can only see these potential developments in capital projects, in biological issues and in scientific developments in which I happen to be interested. The above list is inevitably incomplete and may be inconsistent with the stable economic development of nations. There are downsides in these new developments which are too large to be fully considered here.6.1 The Sterility of Conservative Rule Governments only come in two flavours, in the Progressive and the Conservative varieties. The Chinese concept of the Mandate of Heaven, that governments are only stable and successful when they act in the interests of all their people, is highly relevant to the future of mankind.6.2 The Fractious Nature of Rapid Economic AdvanceMany of these advances can be made within a nation without external assistance. This too has immense implications which are too large to be considered here.6.3 The Spread of Low-Income Limited hours or No-Hours contractsThe widespread adoption of low-income jobs in many nations is discouraging the formation of marriages. This problem seems most developed in Japan where many young men perhaps are disappointing their more realistic female potential partners, resulting in a significant dip in the Japanese birth rate. The Japanese Government has recognised this phenomenon and has produced a report upon it. See The Mystery of Why Japanese People Are Having So Few Babies. The Japanese Government at present sees no solution yet to this issue. But the re-adoption of Shimomuran-Wernerian macroeconomics by Shinzo Abe could lead to many more generations of the Japanese economic miracle.7 Conclusions7.1 Shimomuran-Wernerian macroeconomics opens the door to a new world by providing a newer and fresher intellectual universe, partly consistent with but vastly superior to the current level of Western economic understanding.7.2 The people of the world stand on the edge of a human explosion which is unprecedented in history. That parcel of changes leads to the abundant capital of a much better world and can be enormously beneficial to the prosperity and achievements of mankind, and may be brought about by the widespread adoption of Shimomuran-Wernerian Macroeconomics.7.3 Shimomuran-Wernerian Macroeconomics is the key understanding in the future of mankind because it empowers people to achieve things they could could not possibly do before, such ascreate a much richer capital-abundant world with widespread prosperity,reduce and resolve the problem of global warming andgo to Mars and perhaps elsewhere in this galaxy.We'll see. This collection of essays is perhaps most relevant:George Tait EdwardsBristol, England18 June 2018

1 Introduction In my view this question is wrongly framed. When major countries de-industrialise, they do not “fall out of the developed world” but they lose the leadership capability, the mimetic magic of attracting followers to their economic and social policies, and their manufacturing strength and political, social and economic place in the world order.No countries during the last 50 years have “fallen out of the developed world.” Reality is not like that. But there are two Chinese Empires and two Western Empires (the British Empire and the American hegemony) as listed in Section 13 of this answer where the people have lost their previous prosperity plus countless Washington Consensus camp-followers where the people have failed to become prosperous. These issues deserve a detailed response and an appropriate timescale.In order adequately to identify the previously highly industrialised countries which have lost out during recent years we need a longer time perspective than half a century. About 280 years - from 1735 to 2015, or the last four 70-year periods of Kondratiev hegemonic ascendancy - is perhaps the best time frame within which to identify the biggest modern cultural losers of all time, the rise and fall of the British Empire (1735–1945) and the more recent fall of the American hegemony (1945–2015).These kind of declines have happened before, most notably to the Chinese Dynasties of the Northern Song Empire (960–1279) and to the Yongle Emperor (1402–1424) within the Dynastic era of the Great Ming Empire. The circumstances surrounding the declines of these Empires throw an interesting and relevant light on modern events.1.1 Caveat The sheer historical scale of this Question is immense and I know I cannot possibly cover all aspects of these mainly manufacturing declines, but there are many books and articles which refer to the process of relative economic decline and the interested reader is invited to dig into the subject as deeply as their time and interest permits. I will refer to a few of these books but there are thousands, often smug and usually wrong because Western economic thought does not generally include the role of finance in stimulating economic development.I once found that amusing, but it is now deadly. The Shimomuran remedy to many of the ills of the world is available and urgently needs to be implemented.This reply has potentially such a large scale that I have “Submitted” it despite its inevitable incompleteness. It is easier to illustrate the general case by identifying individual de-industrialisations than to list all the major withdrawals from previous manufacturing superiority.2 Background In all local, historical and recent economic development, the role of finance in stimulating economic development is a key factor not only in explaining the first industrial development in the world of the Northern Song Empire but also in explaining all industrial economic miracles since, including the latest ongoing Chinese Economic Miracle (1975-now).The generally accepted major and academically dominant strand of Western economic thinking - Washington Consensus Macroeconomics - in its various forms of Monetarism, privatisation, neoclassical or neoliberal economics, financialisation, and Austerity, does not include banks in its generally accepted economic models. Consequently the understanding of nearly all Western economists [including their Nobel Laureates!] is quite inadequate to explain, describe or illustrate rapid economic development.I have written seven books and over 350 articles since 6 November 1971 on this topic and continue to hope that one day the West will brighten up. But there is no sign of that so far.3 The Decline and Fall of Empires Is Not An Immediate Process When a previous hegemonic leader declines in their relative economic importance, they do that by the diminishing role or shutdown of their major growth-producing services and industries. Eventually that occurs on an immense and widespread scale. The removal of previous bank support to SMEs and industry is a key factor in producing economic decline. The lack of political support for key industries and for manufacturing industry (which is generally due to the total absence of an industrial policy) is again a major factor in generating long term industrial decline. These issues can be amply illustrated by reference to historical trends and to government economic policies, in the usual tradition of the German Historical School of observation of linking historical political policies to economic consequences.3.1 The British Shutdown of about 800 SME-Supporting Banks, 1840–1940 The shutdown of about a third (or about 260) and takeover of about 540 local SME-supporting banks banks by the London Clearing Banks removed the major factor which had made Britain the workshop of the world, but it took about a century to happen (from about 1840 to about 1940) and the last such SME-supporting Scottish bank, the Airdrie Savings Bank (1835–2017) defied the local bank closure trend for another 77 years but closed its doors on 28 April 2017. See Airdrie Savings Bank - Wikipedia and see the 3-volume book by Margaret Dawes and C.N. Ward-Perkins The Provincial Banks of England and Wales, Private Provincial Banks and Bankers, 1688–1953, ©The Chartered Institute of Bankers, and ©Margaret Dawes, William Clowes, Beccles, Suffolk, 2000 where this issue is fully laid out. And also see Charles W Munn’s “The Scottish Provincial Banking Companies”, John Donald Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh, 1981)3.2 US Steel Production 1900–2016The bankruptcy of Bethlehem Steel in 2001 in the USA, for example, and the cessation of steel production and shipbuilding by that company did not immediately produce US economic decline, but contributed to it, requiring some steel and sea vessel imports instead of domestic production. The graph of American production of pig iron and steel looks like this:Source: Graph of US iron and steel production, 1900-2014, data from USGS website: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/iron_&_steel/Between 1932 and 1944 (the years encompassing FDR’s economic miracle 1938–44) US steel production climbed from about 16 tons to over 80 tons, an amount similar to the 78 tons produced in the US in 2016. So US Steel production in 2016 was less than it was in 1944 and in the 1950s. SeeFDR’s American Economic Miracle 1938-44, or the First Economic Bomb - The USA from 1938 to 1944 (Part 1)The stagnancy of production of US steel and pig iron after the 1980 new policy of Reaganomics, when compared to the rising trends of steel and pig iron production from 1900 to 1978, is particularly impressive in the above graph.The Republican party knew very well that American industry was rapidly de-industrialising. The difficulties in the economic driver of the US economy - in the motor car industry - and the almost complete loss of US car industry market share of light vehicles (down to 3% in 2017!) along with the US Government restructuring of GM and Chrysler illustrated the problems. See The Decline Of The American Auto Industry In 4 Charts3.3 UK Production of Steel 2016With regard to the United Kingdom, one sentence from a recent report puts the issue into perspective“In 2016, the UK produced 8 million tonnes of steel. China produced 808 million tonnes in the same year.”And a House of Commons Briefing Paper Number 07317, authored by Chris Rhodes, dated 2 January 2018 contains in Section 8 the following illustration:As that report remarks “In 1995, China accounted for 13% of the world’s steel production. This had risen to 50% in 2016.”A flourishing steel industry is one major requirement for a successful manufacturing economy. That key precondition no longer exists either in the US or in the UK.4.1 British and American De-industrialisation Neither Britain nor the United States have “fallen out of the developed world” but they have both de-industrialised their economies at a startling rate, and their economic positions in the world are now much less than than they would have been, if they had continued to champion their inventors, innovators and manufacturing industries. Only an industrial economy can provide the jobs and continually upskill the workers to provide the widespread prosperity upon which continual rising living standards depend. [The dot com economy clearly cannot.] It is undeniable that the previously leading economies of the UK and USA now have large numbers of recently impoverished workers and their families mainly located in or around the rustbelt cities where manufacturing industry has declined enormously and has sometimes been completely shut down.4.2 The Kondratiev Hegemonic CycleNikolai Kondratiev (1982–1938) was the Russian economist who“was a proponent of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which promoted small private, free market enterprises in the Soviet Union. He is best known for proposing the theory that Western capitalist economies have long term (50 to 60 years) cycles of boom followed by depression. These business cycles are now called "Kondratiev waves".[1] “There is one interpretation of the Kondratieff wave that I am most interested in propounding here, the hegemonic cycle of development, for which there is some limited evidence.4.3 The Central Role Of Economic Understanding In Creating Recent Economic MiraclesThe role of governments and the economic understanding they possess and practice (and otherwise) is a key factor in producing both high-growth economic miracles and economic decline. If the United Kingdom governments after 1945 had understood no-cost investment credit creation then Britain could have grown the nations of the British Empire as Japan did in the colony of the South Manchurian Railway Company. If the United States governments after 1945 had understood the procedures practised in FDR’s 1938–44 economic miracle, then the postwar world led by America could have introduced no-cost FED-originated investment credit creation economics throughout the US-led world. High growth could have been the norm. Widespread prosperity would have been the result. Poverty would not have been completely abolished in the less developed countries but it would have been greatly reduced.Instead after 1980 the UK introduced Thatcherism, with its cumulative shutdown of most manufacturing industry, its attacks on the living standards of the working class, its attempted destruction of the post-war social contract allegedly supported by the theories of neoclassical economics, privatisation, Austerity for the workers and tax cuts for the rich, and the shrinkage of UK invention and innovation as the London-based Clearing Banks distanced themselves from British industry and SME financial support. I tried and failed to change that by lobbying parliament through the Grylls group but the British Clearing Banks had bought the votes of many MPs who often did not understand economics or the UK position but voted in Committee for the continuity of British economic decline. Which accelerated.It was interesting in 1981 to meet with Mrs Thatcher in 10 Downing Street but very disappointing to discover that neither she nor her cabinet understood the crucial importance of providing bank funding at local level for the inventive and innovative British SMEs that are the source of future employment and new industries. Chancellor Howe turned down the Grylls Group proposals (of which I was the major author) in his budget speech of March 1982 with the comment that other methods were available to achieve the same objectives. None emerged and I do not believe that any such policies exist.And after 1980, the USA practised the economics of President Reagan (or Reaganomics). and consequently the previous policy legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt - the legal status of the unions, the right to form trade associations and the right to strike, as set out in Roosevelt’s National Labor Relations Law - was increasingly abated. The Reagan administration not only legislated against the striking Air Traffic Controllers but let it be known that the Roosevelt National Relations Law would not be enforced by Government action, and employers were free to refuse to recognise or deal with the unions or to refuse to conduct collective bargaining with these to negotiate pay deals. A new powerless labour market was created by the Reagan Government in the USA to underpay or impoverish workers in the hope of creating higher company profits.The fundamental change brought about by Thatcherism and Reaganomics was the political preference for running the economy in the interests of the rich, who received a greater share of the annual increases in national income, and the politically reduced allocation of national income to the workers.Unfortunately when any economy is taken over and run by its monied elite, lower economic growth invariably results. This is one of the greatest lessons of economic history which neither the US nor the UK acknowledge at any level - not politically, not in the media, not in the academics in their universities, not by their businessmen and businesswomen, not in their banks or by their bankers, not in their professional associations or in the popular culture of their people. Neither Reagan nor Thatcher appeared to realise that the commanding presence of their economies on the world stage had been the result of the involvement and activity of their workers and that a policy of preference for the rich and poverty for the workers was a recipe for manufacturing decline.The decline of the British Empire and the US Hegemony was due to the triumph of a defective economic understanding which has many labels but the latest is called neo-liberalism.This issue may need a more thorough explanatory investigation.5 The Other Great Losers of the last Millennium were The Chinese Empires of the Northern Song And Great Ming, but the culture of China has Recently Produced The Post-1975 Economic Resurgence of Modern China (1975-present day)5.1 The Northern Song Empire (960-1127) I have written so much about this elsewhere that I see no need to repeat much of it here. SeeGeorge Tait Edwards's answer to What are major Chinese innovations? andGeorge Tait Edwards's answer to How did Wang Anshi contribute to the economic world?5.2 The Great Ming Empire (1368–1644) The era of the Ming Dynasty succeeded the Yuan/Mongol rule and was particularly notable for the activities of the Yongle Emperor (1402–1424) who improved the Chinese economy to such an extent that the construction of the seven Great Treasure Fleets seemed to place no detectable strain on the Chinese treasury. See Ming treasure voyages - Wikipedia5.3 Modern China (1975-present day) The high economic growth of China is a consequence of the large share of the annual economic growth allocated to the people of China. That high economic growth is also a result of the continual creation of investment credit of about 25% of GDP a year by the PBoC and the direction of that credit into capital investment in the Chinese roads, rail and city building infrastructure and into equipment investment in manufacturing companies.5.4 The Mandate of Heaven The central concept of the Mandate of Heaven is that the ruler of China should rule the country in the interests of its people. SeeMandate of Heaven - Wikipediaand for my take on the subject seeGeorge Tait Edwards's answer to What are some examples of the Mandate of Heaven?That Mandate does not simply apply to Chinese leaders.5.5 The Basic Equation of Economic Development After Keynes, Western economists knew that the fundamental equation of National Income (NY) was equal to Consumption (C) plus Investment (I) plus Government spending (G) (ignoring for the moment that national income is increased by exports and diminished by imports). SoNY=C+I+GDomar and Harrod dynamised this equation by placing deltas before each item so that growth in National Income (dNY) was equal to growth in Consumption (dC) plus growth in Investment (dI) plus growth in Government spending (dG).But if an Austerity-increasing policy of low growth for the workers sets dC equal to nearly nil, and if the lack of an industrial policy reduces dI, and if a policy of small government reduces dG to nearly nil, then that’s an economic recipe for very low growth. Which is what has happened to the USA and the UK.6 The United Kingdom Hegemonic Periods and Thatcherism6.1 United Kingdom Hegemony 1 (1735–1815) “The Age of Steam”The Scottish-originated English-adopted industrial revolution was a product of the local banking systems which had fostered invention and innovation based upon intellectual insights into how things really worked. James Watt (1736–1819) took Richard Trevithick’s (1771–1833) steam engine (see Richard Trevithick - Wikipedia) and he converted it into a continually operating multipurpose machine, with over six times the efficiency of the original invention. SeeWatt steam engine - WikipediaThe Carron Iron Works (1759–1982) which became insolvent after 223 years. assisted that invention [that company was renamed the Carron Phoenix in 1982 see Carron Company - Wikipedia] because“The company also cast parts for James Watt's steam engine in 1765.”The Carron Iron Works also produced the Carronade, a lightweight cannon which helped establish, through the Royal Navy, British naval superiority for the decades from the 1770s to the 1850s. See Carronade - Wikipedia and it should be noted that this cannon was a direct development of the gunpowder artillery of the Song dynasty. See Gunpowder artillery in the Song dynasty - WikipediaJames Watt entered into a partnership with Matthew Boulton and produced over a hundred steam engines which drove the latter part of the British industrial revolution’s first seventy-year hegemonic period (1735–1805). The early years of that revolution were driven by the Tobacco Lord development through promissory notes of the three states of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina and the founding of local Scottish Banks led by Murdoch in 1730 in and around Glasgow and by the Tobacco Lord funding of other Glasgow-centred banks from 1749 and their partial funding of 88 Scottish companies, including capital for the Carron Iron Works.6.2 United Kingdom Hegemony 2 (1815–1885): “The Railway Age”The second period of British hegemonic dominance was the Railway Age from 1805 to 1875. That period was a direct development of the application of the steam engine to transport and the construction of railways.6.3 United Kingdom Hegemony 3 (1885–1945) “The Electricity Age”The third British hegemonic period was due to electrical engineering developments [based on the “second great unification of physics” based upon the insights of the Scottish James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879)]. Maxwell’s electromagnetic understandings is“central to the performance of cellular mobile phones, GPS and Radar.”See James Clerk Maxwell Foundation - Wikipedia6.4 British Hegemonic Periods more Broadly DefinedIn my view the three British hegemonic periods are perhaps best described a little more extensively asGreat Britain 1: 1735–1805 The Tobacco, Cotton and Steam AgeGreat Britain 2: 1805–1885 The Railway and Steel AgeGreat Britain 3: 1885–1945 The Electrical Engineering and Automobiles AgeThese headings are only at best the most prominent features of each era and of course much else was also happening within these periods.7. In both Britain and America, war has been the economic education of the Conservative classes. Only after war when the upper classes of the UK and the USA could clearly see that the working classes had given their blood to preserve the nation have the Conservatives in the UK and the Republicans in the USA acted to improve the lot of the working classes.7.1 The UK Keynesian Period 1945–1979In this post war period, British Governments acted in the interests of improving the life circumstances and prosperity of the British people.The passage of Rab Butler’s 1944 Education Act and the Beverage Report and the Labour Government creation of the five pillars (or giants) of the Welfare State - which were the removal of want, better secondary education to remove ignorance, a new housing programme of slum clearance and new housing to remove squalor, a National Health Service free at the point of use to improve health, and a Keynesian full employment policy to remove poverty. See The Welfare State : Revision, Page 5During this period, the Keynesian policy of full employment was a central belief of successive British Governments, and that policy resulted in a widespread prosperity, perhaops best summed up in Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s 1957 statement “You’ve never had it so good.” SeeBBC ON THIS DAY | 20 | 1957: Britons 'have never had it so good'7.2 UK 1980–2018 From Economic Ascendancy to Thatcherism Despite three Kondratiev seventy year periods of economic dominance, the United Kingdom produced the leadership of Mrs Thatcher in 1979. Her political programme was one of profound division, to rule the United Kingdom only for the benefit of the rich.There was a 1952 Little Richard song which aptly summarised the results of Thatcher’s leadership. The song was called “She got what she wanted, but she lost what she had.” The slightly explicit lyrics areThe song was revised in 1962 making it less explicit. See Little Richard - He Got What He Wanted (But He Lost What He Had) / Why Don't You Change Your WaysMrs Thatcher succeeded in foisting a system of rule for the rich on the politics of the United Kingdom. When she did that, the three seventy-year periods of hegemonic dominance of the UK were finally over. The only way a country can become a world power is by running the country in the interests of all its people, which the UK once did during the 19th century, which FDR did from 1938–44, and which China is now doing.8 The United States Hegemony (1945–2015)8.1 The Foundation of US Economic Dominance in FDR’s Economic Miracle (1938–44) Roosevelt knew that in order to win the Second World War he needed to get ALL of the working people of America to help to achieve the war production aims. He did that with great skill. FDR’s economic miracle provided the foundation of the US postwar economic dominance of the West, and produced widespread prosperity within the USA..8.2 The US Post-War Keynesian Period (1945–79) The United States of America entered the postwar period with acommanding position in manufacturing industry. One illustration of this is the production of motor cars, including all private motor vehicles of all types plus all kinds of commercial vehicles. The car production numbers look like this:Source: From Table 119 Page 270 of The Statistical Yearbook 1949-50 United Nations, New York,1950. [Note that the above table does not include the USSRor China.]The USA produced over 80% of the world’s motor vehicles from 1946 to 1949.The legacy of FDR’s 1938–44 economic miracle- the dozens of government-funded massive steel plants sold into private hands, the over 50 artificial-rubber-producing factories constructed by no-cost FED credit creation, and the similarly funded vast high strength aluminium production plants, as well as the better roads and ports and airports built to facilitate easy fast transport around the USA and exports and imports - all provided an excellent springboard for the great US growth of the consumer society in the 1950s and 1960s. American homes were the first to have the chrome-bumpered stylised cars and the car industry centred in Detroit became the backbone of the US economy and aluminium pots and pans were produced in the ex-wartime factories and used in US kitchens. The ingenuity of Americans seemed endless and highly admirable.On May 25 1961, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, announced and proposed that the US "should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." See We choose to go to the Moon - WikipediaThe Moon Project succeeded and on 20 July 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the lunar surface. It seemed that the Americans were living up to the statement in Genesis 11:16 that“Behold, the people [is] one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”The American Government development of the German rocket technology through Operation Paperclip (see Operation Paperclip - Wikipedia) and the leadership of Werner von Braun had done something which had been previously thought impossible.During the US post war period from 1945–79 there was a general acceptance by US politicians of the Keynesian economics of government fiscal stimulation to provide full employment. Successive US Governments acted in the interests of the American people, and due to full employment policies enjoyed the highest living standards in the world. In retrospect many people see this era as a kind of “golden age” of the US economy.As I observed when I was working for the UN in 1976, American economic advisors were widely regarded as beneficial angels, because their advice was specific to the circumstances of the nations being advised, and was both helpful and practical.8.3 The US Washington Consensus/Neoclassical Economics Era (1980–2015)The Washington Consensus era ushered in the usual fiscal contractionary policies not only in the USA but for all governments following the American lead. The re-introduced understandings of neoclassical economics were announced as being “valid everywhere in the world, like the laws of Physics” but unfortunately that was more of a hope than a reality. The recently-published acceptance of the failings of neoclassical economics by three IMF economists come to the conclusion that neoliberalism neoclassical economics has been oversold. SeeThe full articles can be read at Neoliberalism: Oversold?During the neo-classical post-Keynesian era of the USA, the central industry of the economy - motor car production - fell from the 80% of world output which it had been in the late 1940s to about 11.3% in 2017. The UK car production fell from about the range of 8% to 10% of the world total during the late 1940s to less than 1.8% in 2017, and even that percentage refers almost entirely to the production of foreign-owned motor car assembly plants in the UK (such as the three Japanese car companies Honda, Nissan, and Toyota and the French Company Groupe PSA which now owns Vauxhall).Source: This is an edited extract derived from the table at List of countries by motor vehicle production - WikipediaSome reduction from the market share by the USA and the UK in the late 1940s was of course inevitable as other nations industrialised, but the almost total 97% loss of production of light vehicle car production in the USA (with the US car companies concentrating on truck production) along with the replacement of a previously thriving motor industry in the UK by four foreign-owned assembly plants, represents a great loss in local manufacturing capacity and the loss of the components suppliers and worker employment which goes with it.9 The Continuing Relevance of the Mandate of Heaven The Mandate of Heaven is not only a theoretical guidance about how a leader should morally behave but is also a practical statement about how to create a faster-growing and even world-dominating economy. The political and economic declines of the Northern Song Empire, the Great Ming Empire, the United Kingdom and the USA have all been due to the political elevation of the rich elite of the nation above its people.That is not a political statement but an historical observation.9.1 The Role of Constrictionary Credit in the Yuan Empire And The Role Of Political “Conservatives” In Bringing About Rapid Economic Decline In Ming Yongle EmperorWhen China was taken over by the Mongols, that event ended the Song Empire. These new rulers did not understand the role of Wang-Anshi created investment credit for agriculture and industry and public works (such as maintaining the dams) as the source of Chinese prosperity. The Yuan/Mongol Empire ended the Empire of the Song and created credit for consumption purposes (as the US does today) and this caused the inflation which was one major reason (the other was crop failure due to lack of irrigation maintenance works) for the brevity of the Yuan Empire (1271–1368).When the “Conservatives” came to dominate Ming China, their major policy was the reduction of credit and the victimisation of the poor in defiance of the “Mandate of Heaven” and these policies led to the rapid end of the great Chinese Empire of the Ming Yongle Emperor. The Conservatives not only let the then-greatest shipyard in the world at Nanjing fall into disrepair but they also forbade the construction of ships of more than two masts and the Ministry of War implied that the voyages of the great Treasure Fleet were fictional because no-one alive could remember them, and much of the documentation about past greatness was deliberately destroyed, perhaps because it was an unwanted reminder of previous Chinese greatness compared to its subsequent decline. As is recorded at the Columbia University site at The Ming Voyages | Asia for Educators | Columbia University comments in the section headed The Fateful Decision :“The Ming court was divided into many factions, most sharply into the pro-expansionist voices led by the powerful eunuch factions that had been responsible for the policies supporting Zheng He's voyages, and more traditional conservative Confucian court advisers who argued for frugality. When another seafaring voyage was suggested to the court in 1477, the vice president of the Ministry of War confiscated all of Zheng He's records in the archives, damning them as "deceitful exaggerations of bizarre things far removed from the testimony of people's eyes and ears." He argued that "the expeditions of San Bao [meaning "Three Jewels," as Zheng He was called] to the West Ocean wasted tens of myriads of money and grain and moreover the people who met their deaths may be counted in the myriads. Although he returned with wonderful precious things, what benefit was it to the state?Linked to eunuch politics and wasteful policies, the voyages were over. By the century's end, ships could not be built with more than two masts, and in 1525 the government ordered the destruction of all oceangoing ships. The greatest navy in history, which once had 3,500 ships (the U.S. Navy today has only 324), was gone."9.2 In The United Kingdom The most inventive and innovative economy in the world was probably the United Kingdom at the time of the industrial revolution. About 850 local private banks were created to provide the loans required to fund the necessary equipment which could enable the transfer of local SME invention into factory floor innovation.The population of Great Britain in 1801 was about 10.5 million rising to 27 million by 1850. It is difficult to list all of the key inventions of the British era of industrialisation, but it seems that perhaps over 700 key inventions - or about 25 inventions per million people -may have occurred. According to the research of Simon Hermann, about 1600 “world champion” SMEs may have been created by Germany’s Sparkassen local SME-supporting banking system, and the private provincial banks of England and Wales may have supported a similar level of inventiveness and innovation.9.2.1 Two interesting books about the decline of the United KingdomMy selection is Robert Skidelsky’s Britain Since 1900 - A Success Story? [Paperback – 30 Oct 2014] and John Eatwell’s 1982 book Whatever Happened to Britain?The Skidelsky book is an interesting attempt to redefine Britain’s economic failure as a limited kind of social and political success. The author argues, as the Wikipedia review puts it, that“We are accustomed to judging nations by their success in increasing or maintaining power - by these measures Britain has failed to thrive, but what of quality of life, prosperity, political, cultural and moral values?The British people are richer and healthier than in 1900. Despite cataclysmic events and some fraying at the edges, our society is more democratic and tolerant, and our constitution of liberty has been preserved, at a cost. But inequality of wealth income is much as it was before 1914, finance is scarcely less proud or industry more content, and history continues to be made by the elite.”Unfortunately the facts contradict nearly all of what Skidelsky alleges. The quality of life in Britain has declined immensely for the 14 million poor and for these eight million families who are targeted by recent Conservative Governments as sources of saving for funding of Government tax cuts for the rich. See the excellent reports continually produced by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation about this topic, such as this one UK Poverty 2017 which points out that“UK Poverty 2017 highlights that overall, 14 million people live in poverty in the UK – over one in five of the population. This is made up of eight million working-age adults, four million children and 1.9 million pensioners. 8 million live in families where at least one person is in work.” andNumber of children in poverty surges by 100,000 in one yearLord Skidelsky, who is the author of by far the best biography of John Maynard Keynes, in his attempts to redefine Britain’s greatness in terms of its non-economic performance, is often wide of the mark. Prosperity is very unequally distributed as a consequence of Conservative Government policy. Our society is not more democratic because successive Conservative Governments have passed legislation to reduce the numbers of non-conservative voters on the voting rolls.Our society is not more tolerant. Race hate crimes surged upwards after the Conservative Government held the BREXIT referendum and Britain became more xenophobic.Our constitution of liberty has not been preserved. The takeover by the Cameron-led Coalition Government of the Electoral register through the 2013 Elector Registration and Administration Act was designed to drive millions of voters in the groups who did largely did not vote Conservative off the Parliamentary Voters Rolls. See David Cameron’s Partisan Gerrymandering of the British Democracy - where the evidence is listed. In the most extreme case of the largely black London constituency of Hackney, 40% of voters disappeared from the voting rolls.If the UK had a constitution like the US one, Cameron would have been impeached for the democracy-destroying effects of what he did.Allin all, I cannot even begin to agree that Britain since 1900 was in any respects “a success story”. To start the century with the most dominant, innovative and progressive economy in the world, and end it as an industrially demolished financialised low-level manufacturing economy; to start with the biggest bank in the world (The Midland Bank) and end it with that bank as a branch of the HSBC; to have had in Mrs Thatcher a Prime Minster who regarded the workers as “the internal enemy” and who destroyed first, the National Union of Mineworkers in a pitched battle at Orgeave (and the BBC reversed the order of events on TV, showing that the miners first attacked the police when the reality was the reverse) and second, the major pillars (except for the NHS) of the social contract and workers’ rights; the destruction of the coal mining and the steel industries of the UK, producing decline but not development ; the passing of the partisan Poll Tax (which had the intention of reducing non-Conservative voters on the Electoral Rolls) and which caused an unwarranted fourth Conservative victory for Major at the 1992 election - the 20th century showed that the UK Governments had lost their way in terms of economic development, social progress, economic understanding, and had failed in their duty of care to the British people. The elevation of political callousness and the destruction of the social contract, the elevation of finance above (and her hostility to) manufacturing, and the elevation of a non-performing Monetarism above Keynesianism were all wrong Government policies, none of which are adequately highlighted in Skidelsky’s book. The book resembles a kind of “BBC book” providing a comforting bedtime story to the British elite who the BBC represent and speak for. That book does not come to valid conclusions at all. The street parties spontaneously erupting at many locations on Thatcher’s death make a greater statement than this book does. See Criticism of the BBC for broadcasting five seconds (yes, five seconds!) of the song about Thatcher “Heigh ho, the wicked witch is dead” which criticism says a lot it does not intend to say. SeeRadio 1 controller defends decision over Lady Thatcher songGoogle produces 5.03 million hits for the words “Celebrations of Thatcher’s death.” I cannot begin to summarise these here.[I last read John Eatwell’s book several decades ago. I’ll re-read it and review it here in due course. More follows eventually.]10 The Relevance of Oswald Spengler’s Book “The Decline of the West” two volumes, Vol 1 1918 and revised 1922, Vol 2, 1923.Spengler thought a kind of plant analogy might apply to cultures -he illustrated that idea by identifying eight "high cultures" which were seeded and grow to maturity, then inevitably decay. In his view they all have a limited life of about two millennia, the first millennium consisting of growth followed by one of decline. There does not seem to be objective evidence for that viewpoint.Spengler's classification of the ideas of the Jews, Christians and Muslims, is "Magian" while the Ancient Greek and Roman ideas are "Appollinairian" and the modern Western ones are"Faustian."See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_WestSome of Spengler's summaries of trends are prescient. For example he says, according to the Wikipedia summary of his book (source quoted above)"Spengler notes that the greater the concentration of wealth in individuals, the more the fight for political power revolves around questions of money. One cannot even call this corruption or degeneracy, because this is in fact the necessary end of mature democratic systems."While that has certainly happened in the UK and the USA, it is the denial of democracy to allow rich individuals to have the overweening power to determine political decisions in their financial favour.10.1 The Failure of the so-called “Free Press”and MediaSpengler's comments on the media are interesting. From the Wikipedia summary above:"On the subject of the press, Spengler is equally contemptuous. Instead of conversations between men, the press and the "electrical news-service keep the waking-consciousness of whole people and continents under a deafening drum-fire of theses, catchwords, standpoints, scenes, feelings, day by day and year by year." Through the media, money is turned into force—the more spent, the more intense its influence."There are few better descriptions of the dog-whistle politics now usual in the Western media.10.2 The Failure of the Western “Democracies” - the USA and the UKIn both the USA and UK, the right to vote has been deliberately limited by government action to produce the success of right-wing candidates and governments.See The United Kingdom and the United States of America Have Both Lost “The Mandate of Heaven” where I say:“The Recent Removal of Voting Rights By Conservative Forces in US And UK Governments“Since 1980, the elective dictatorships of both the United Kingdom and the United States have increasingly ruled in the interests of the rich and privileged. But they have not been content just do that.“For example, voting rights have been denied to felons for the most minor offences in the USA, and the continuation of that disenfranchisement has been decided by the Florida governor Jeb Bush. This led to that state and its electoral college votes being declared for President George Bush in the 2000 election. As Mother Jones commented atHow Jeb Bush became a player in one of the South's darkest traditionshttps://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/jeb-bush-florida-felon-voting-rights-clemency/“The 2000 presidential election was ultimately decided by a 537-vote margin in Florida. More than 500,000 ex-felons were barred from the polls, including at least 139,000 African Americans, who vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates. Their exclusion almost certainly changed the outcome of the race. The beneficiary, of course, was Jeb Bush’s brother.”“In the United Kingdom, David Cameron’s Coalition Government passed the 2013 Individual Registration and Administration Act which initially disenfranchised 13% of voters — mainly many women, the poor, council tenants, the Black and Middle East Community and the young — all of whom are unlikely to vote Conservative. In the worst case of the largely black community of Hackney, 40% of voters disappeared from the rolls. Cameron won the 2015 election to the surprise of all the pollsters and the people because of that massive politically-driven disenfranchisement.See “How David Cameron’s Government Stole the 2015 General Election” at:How David Cameron’s Coalition Government Stole the 2015 General ElectionAlthough the USA and the UK continually claim to be democracies, neither nation is now democratic.11 The End of The Dominance of the “Anglosphere”Many Western economists do not accept Kondratiev’s concept of cyclical booms and depressions as the historically major driving forces in history. It may be more useful to provide a reconsideration of the major issue, in the context of the indisputable end of the dominance of the Anglosphere.The “Anglosphere” era, when first Britain established a world-wide empire in which the Royal Navy ruled the waves and on which “the sun never set” and then the unrecognised takeover of that Empire by the American economy from 1945 lasted from 1735 until 2014, when the USA lost a century of economic pre-eminence and was replaced by China as the largest economy at $2014 PPP estimates, which the CIA World Factbook duly recorded.Arnold Toynbee in his monumental 12-volume “Study of History” has expressed the interesting view that civilisations respond to external challenges about three and a half times. He illustrates this by suggesting that when the invaders destroyed the dams and waterways that were crucial to the civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, these essential irrigations were rebuilt well and perhaps even improved upon on the first three separate occasions, but after the the fourth destruction of these works the response was inadequate and half-hearted.If Toynbee’s view were correct, and if the period of hegemonic dominance is 70 years, then 3.5 “beats” is 245 years, and if the UK dominance started in 1735, this calculation suggests that the dominance of the Anglosphere should have ended from about 1970. That date does contain the seeds of UK/USA decline because it was during the 1970s that the neoclassical recovery and the ultimately less successful economic policies of the Washington Consensus (dominant from 1980) ruled the intellectual roost in the West, with the results we see today.12 Consequences The prioritisation of tax cuts for the already rich above the survival of the environment and the wealth and welfare of the workers has caused and is causing appalling outcomes. Dealing with each of these in detail would take too long, but very briefly three of the main consequences are:The Failure to Deal With Global Warming The warmest four years in the history of the world are the last four years. The Arctic is now so warm that the melting of the giant Greenland ice shield now looks inevitable, with a four degree rise in average world temperatures by 2090. The polar bears are now probably doomed to extinction. Major coastal cities will resemble Venice in future. Many important food-growing deltas (such as the Rhine in Europe, the delta of the Ganges, the Jamuna (which is the main channel of the Brahmaputra) and the Meghna rivers on which much of Bangladesh is located, the Nile, the Mississippi and more deltas than I can list here) will be salinated and food production will declineNeedless Poverty The almost four decades since 1980 have failed to produce a single economic miracle in the Anglosphere. The shutdown of manufacturing industries in the UK and the USAhas impoverished many millions of workers. Foreign Direct Investment has signally failed to support faster growth anywhere. The highest rate of foreign investment cannot possibly equal 25% of GDP year after year, so that result is predictable. Shimomuran macroeconomics enables nations to do for themselves what outside investors never could.China Must Lead Where The USA Doesn’t President Trump has declared that he doesn’t believe in global warming and has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement. China can and should lead on the major issues ofInternational financial reform, with the creation of an SDR-like international settlement system that will not be linked to any one currencyglobal warming, where known technical solutions could make an enormous difference and where China could partly fund these in a successor to OBOR (one World of Lesser Temperatures - OWOLT?)economic growth education, where the NSD college could educate nations about how to grow rapidly and “sustainably”13 Conclusions The great “losers” in history arethe people of the Song Empire who lost their high living standards when the first Chinese industrial revolution was snuffed out by the Mongols (who ruled China only for their benefit) in the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368)the people of the Ming Empire who lost their high living standards when the Chinese industrial resurgence was ended by the Conservatives (who ruled China for the benefit of the rich) from 1422 and after the overthrow of the Yongle Emperor in 1424the people of the United Kingdom and the United States from 1980 when these countries both adopted the non-performing Washington Consensus Macroeconomics (WCM) and low growth and poverty spread to the home of the industrial revolution and the one-time American hope of the worldthe people of the Western and Westernised world who have lost higher development and living standards due to the frequently forced adoption (by Washington-based institutions) of the low-growth Washington Consensus/neoclassical macroeconomics14 The great “winners” in history are the people of these governments who adopted investment credit economics in some or all of its local and national formsIn the first industrial revolution of the pre-Mongol Northern Song Empire due to the understanding of the first no-cost investment creation economist Wang Anshi who was Prime Minister (from 1070–76) to the Emperor Shenzong (whose rule was from 1067–1085)In the industrial resurgence of the Great Ming Empire under the Yongle Emperor (ruled 1402–1424) who contracted and despatched the seven Treasure Fleets under Zheng He; during this dynasty the largest dockyards in the world were at Nanjing and the Emperor’s many construction and reclamation projects produced a widespread prosperityIn the three tobacco states of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina (1702-1776) when Tobacco Lord Promissory Notes of pounds of tobacco were an accepted currency causing an economic boomIn Scotland due to Tobacco Lord establishment of about 50 local banks from 1730 and their funding of Scottish industry 1735–1776 and subsequentlyIn England due to about 800 local private banks funding local SMEs from 1750–1880In Germany where the Sparkassen Banking System helped establish, grow, and develop local high-tech SMEs from about 1802 to the present dayIn the South Manchurian Railway Company where no-cost Japanese-fiat investment credit creation caused the first 20th century Asian economic miracle 1920–1945In the USA when the FED created vast amounts of credit to fund FDR’s industrial war-winning economic miracle 1938–1944In post war Japan (1945–1972) where investment credit creation led to the Japanese economy becoming the second largest industrial economy in the world by 1972 and where Japanese living standards, following the adoption of the Shimomura Income-Doubling Plan (1960–1970) by the Ikeda Government. doubled from 1960 to 1966 - See George Tait Edwards's answer to What should everyone know about Japanese history?In South Korea where President Park increased the economic growth rate to 14% pa for two decades from 1960 to 1980 by adopting Shimomuran MacroeconomicsIn Taiwan during the mid 1960s when the Taiwanese adopted Shimomuran macroeconomicsIn China from 1975 where the all-out adoption of Shimomuran Macroeconomics produced an economic growth rate of 10% a year from 1975 to 2015 lifting over a billion Chinese people out of poverty.The other Answers to this question are also interesting.

Trump is Leading the Most Corrupt Administration in U.S. History, One of First-Class KleptocratsBY ALEXANDER NAZARYANON 11/2/17 AT 9:54 AMRepublican presidential nominee Donald Trump addresses a campaign rally at the Deltaplex Arena October 31, 2016 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. With just eight days until the election, polls show a slight tightening in the race.CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTYANALYSISDONALD TRUMPTRUMP ADMINISTRATIONHe’d promised to build the wall. To make America great again. To lock her up. Now, in the last weeks of his campaign for president, Donald J. Trump needed one more stirring slogan. And since he was badly trailing Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, it would have to be a marketing marvel worthy of Mad Men’s Don Draper, one that encapsulated the vague yet compelling promise of his candidacy—its worship of American ideals and its total break from them.On October 17, 2016, the Trump-Pence campaign released a five-point plan for ethics reform that featured lobbying restrictions that would insulate Trump and his administration from corporate and interests. The plan was called “drain the swamp.”SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTERSIGN UPUpdate your preferences »Trump tried out the phrase that day at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He used it the next day at a rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “We’re going to end the government corruption,” Trump vowed, “and we’re going to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.” He then recited a litany of accusations regarding Clinton and her use of a private email server, calling her “the most corrupt person to ever run for the presidency.”“Build the wall” had been the raw opening cry of the Trump campaign. “Make America great again” was its chorus. “Drain the swamp” was its closing number. But while talk of a border wall plainly thrilled Trump, he was apparently never too worked up about the festering bog that was the nation’s capital. He said as much in an October 26 rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, in one of his unsettling bouts of honesty: “I said that about a week ago, and I didn’t like it that much, didn’t sound that great. And the whole world picked it up.… Funny how things like that happen.… So ‘drain the swamp,’ I didn’t like it. Now, I love it, right?”“Drain the swamp” fit perfectly with Trump’s constant complaints about the “rigged system,” thereby excusing what some said was going to be a historic defeat. As the campaign concluded, Trump turned himself into a martyr for the cause of American democracy, waging a principled but doomed campaign.TWITTERBut a funny thing happened on the way to a third Obama term. Winning endowed the things Trump said during the campaign with an import they’d previously lacked. He was, back then, a hopeless renegade, troubling but not threatening. Then, the returns from Florida and Wisconsin came in on the evening of November 8. And while many understood that his “rigged system” was just an excuse, “drain the swamp” sure sounded like a promise.So as the presidential inauguration approached, anticipation bubbled through the sulfurous nexus of Capitol Hill politicians, special interest groups and their K Street lobbyists, the media, the establishment and just about everyone else who had dismissed Trump and his slogans as a publicity stunt. There was now a question, rather urgently in need of an answer: Was he serious about all that “swamp” stuff?Not really, revealed former House Speaker and loyal Trump supporter Newt Gingrich, admitting to NPR on December 21 that “drain the swamp” was never a genuine promise. “I'm told he now just disclaims that,” Gingrich said a month before Trump was to assume the Oval Office. “He now says it was cute, but he doesn't want to use it anymore.”Someone from Trump Tower must have placed an angry call, because the former speaker soon tweeted that he’d overstated the case. But that didn’t kill the story. That same day, Politico wondered if “drain the swamp” would be Trump’s “first broken promise.” It cited the access-peddling lobbying firm of Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey R. Lewandowski, as well as the consulting firm with troubling foreign ties run by his incoming national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. “Trump and his allies have engaged in some of the same practices they accused Hillary Clinton of exploiting and vowed to change,” Politico wrote.Now, a year after the election—and more than a year after Trump first made that pledge to the American people—many observers believe the swamp has grown into a sinkhole that threatens to swallow the entire Trump administration. The number of White House officials currently facing questions, lawsuits or investigation is astonishing: Trump, being sued for violating the “emoluments clause” of the U.S. Constitution by running his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.; Paul J. Manafort, the second Trump campaign manager, indicted on money laundering charges in late October; Flynn, for undisclosed lobbying work done on behalf of the Turkish government; son-in-law and consigliere Jared Kushner, for failing to disclose $1 billion in loans tied to his real-estate company; and at least six Cabinet heads being investigated for or asked about exorbitant travel expenses, security details or business dealings.RELATED STORIESIt's Trump's Swamp NowPrivate Jets Scandal: So Much for Draining the SwampKellyanne Conway Scrutinized for Taking Private FlightsHHS Secretary Tom Price Quits in Charter Flight ScandalAn allegation of corruption is, of course, not proof that corruption took place, but when has the American body politic ever awaited certitude before passing judgment? “The most corrupt presidency and administration we’ve ever had,” says Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham University law professor who authored a book titled Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United.To supporters of the president, charges of corruption are being leveled with undue zeal by anti-Trump forces that will say or do anything to thwart the president’s agenda and lead to his removal from office. “President Trump came to Washington to drain the swamp and is following through on his promises,” White House deputy press secretary Raj S. Shah told me, citing Trump’s executive order on ethics, the elevation to deputy status of ethics lawyers in the White House counsel’s office and “unprecedented steps to rein in waste of taxpayer funds.”Trump friend Christopher Ruddy, the publisher of conservative outlet Newsmax, laughed off the suggestion that Trump would enter public service to enrich himself, as critics have suggested. At the same time, he added, "I don't think it's like they wake up in the morning and say, 'How can we drain the swamp today?'"Ruddy thinks Trump can only do so much to fulfill his promise on ethics. "At the end of the day, the swamp rules," he told me, referencing the enormous class of unelected technocrats that will outlast Trump's presidency, as well as all the ones that come after.But according to the presidential historian Robert Dallek, no American leader has acted with more unadulterated self-interest as Trump. Dallek says that in terms of outright corruption, Trump is worse than both Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding, presidents who oversaw the most flagrant instances of graft in American political history. Grant’s stellar reputation as a Civil War general is tarnished in part by the Whiskey Ring scandal, in which Treasury Department officials stole taxes from alcohol distillers; members of Harding’s administration plundered oil reserves in Teapot Dome, a rock outcropping in Wyoming that has lent its name to the most notorious example of government corruption in American political history. In both cases, the fault of the president was in his lack of oversight. As far as Dallek is concerned, something more nefarious is at work in the White House of Donald Trump.“What makes this different,” Dallek says, “is that the president can’t seem to speak the truth about a host of things.” Trump isn’t just allowing corruption, in Dallek’s view, but encouraging it. "The fish rots from the head," he reminds.Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, puts the matter even more bluntly: "I've never seen anything like this."Disgusting Displays of WealthOn June 29, Secretary of Veterans Affairs David J. Shulkin sent a memorandum to top managers in his department. In the memo, “Essential Employee Travel,” Shulkin outlined a new process by which travel would be approved and documented. “I expect this will result in decreased employee travel and generate savings,” he wrote.Two weeks later, Shulkin and his wife, Merle Bari, got on a plane and flew from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Copenhagen. With them were three VA staffers and one staffer’s husband. There was also a six-person security detail. “The 10-day trip was not entirely a vacation,” reported The Washington Post. But it wasn’t a three-day conference in Tulsa, either. Shulkin planned the trip so that it began with meetings in Denmark and ended about a week later with meetings in London. In between, there was watching tennis at Wimbledon, visiting medieval castles, touring and shopping. A tourist from Madison, Wisconsin, told the Post she spotted Shulkin and company “whisked to the front of the line” at an attraction in Copenhagen. One of Shulkin’s taxpayer-funded security guards, she said, was hauling a “large number of shopping bags.”The Post noted that American taxpayers reimbursed Bari for her expenses during the trip, which may have been as high as $3,600 per day. Although some of the other members of the party paid for their travel, taxpayers nevertheless incurred significant costs associated with flights and security. Perhaps it is naïve to expect a Cabinet head to Skype into international gatherings, but the previous VA head, Robert A. McDonald, had not needed to take a single trip abroad to do his work.Secretary of Veteran Affairs David J. ShulkinPAUL MORIGI/GETTYIN THE MAGAZINEDOWNLOADSSPYTALKWill Trump Resign if He’s Impeached or Indicted?FEATURESU.S.Combating Fear and Loathing in 2019FEATURESU.S.How to Make America Great—FinallyDOWNTIMECULTUREConceptual Artist Tom Sachs Tweaks SwitzerlandFEATURESWORLDTurkey Pushes Syrian Refugees to Return HomeNEW WORLDHEALTHPatient, Heal ThyselfShulkin is one of six Trump Cabinet members being investigated for (or at the very least, being asked uncomfortable questions about) travel or security expenses:>>>The inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency is investigating its administrator, Scott Pruitt, for what The Washington Post says are “at least four noncommercial and military flights” in the past eight months, these having cost the government more than $58,000. Pruitt has also built himself a $25,000 soundproof booth in his office, for reasons that remain unclear. Pruitt’s personal security detail includes high-ranking EPA investigators who are supposed to be tracking environmental violations.Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott PruittMARK REINSTEIN/CORBIS/GETTY>>>Steven T. Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs banker who now runs the Treasury Department, faced an inquiry from his agency's inspector general for allegedly commandeering a government jet so that he and his wife, Scottish actress Louise Linton, could see the Great American Eclipse in Lexington, Kentucky. That trip came to light after Linton engaged in a social media spat with an Oregon woman who was disgusted by the couple’s displays of wealth. The inspector general eventually concluded that Mnuchin had not travelled to Kentucky solely to see the eclipse, but the episode was embarrassing all the same.That same month, Mnuchin took a U.S. Air Force C-37 jet from New York to Washington. The trip cost taxpayers $25,000, and while use of military planes by government officials is common, there are dozens of commercial flights daily that cover the same route. Timothy F. Geithner, who was President Barack Obama’s secretary of the treasury, frequently flew coach when he made that trip.Treasury Secretary Steve MnuchinNICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/GETTY>>>Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, is being investigated for travel expenses that include a $12,375 chartered flight to Montana from Las Vegas, where he had attended an event for a hockey team owned by one of his benefactors. Zinke is being investigated for two other chartered flights as well.Interior Secretary Ryan ZinkeMARK WILSON/GETTY>>>Elaine L. Chao, who heads the Transportation Department, has used government planes on at least seven occasions, according to The Washington Post. She is also facing questions about her ownership of stock in Vulcan Materials, a building company that would likely benefit from a $1 trillion infrastructure plan Trump has touted.Secretary of Transportation Elaine ChaoMICHAEL REYNOLDS-POOL/GETTY>>>Rick Perry, the energy secretary, took a private plane to visit “a uranium facility in Piketon, Ohio,” in late September, according to Reuters. He once also, the same outlet reported, flew into “a private airport in Kansas that was within a 45-minute drive of Kansas City International Airport.”Energy Secretary Rick PerryALEX WONG/GETTY>>>Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, pays for her private flights (she is a billionaire), but she uses security from the U.S. Marshals Service, a highly unusual move that will cost the American taxpayer about $1 million per month. She is the first education secretary to have such extensive protection in recent history.Education Secretary Betsy DeVosWIN MCNAMEE/GETTYChiding chatter about the Trump administration’s high-flying ways began when Politico reporters Dan Diamond and Rachana Pradhan got a tip that Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was using private planes to jet around the globe, infuriating already-demoralized HHS employees back home with grating dispatches from Switzerland, Liberia and elsewhere. As Diamond and Pradhan wrote, the “notoriously secretive Cabinet secretary” had not been forthcoming about his travel records, in keeping with the Trump administration’s broader aversion to releasing records unless forced to. Their shoe-leather reporting included waiting at the charter terminal at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, hoping to see Price entering or leaving a private jet.Diamond and Pradhan published their initial story on Price’s private-jet travel on September 19, their details dredged from the very swamp Trump promised to drain: costly chartered flights to Philadelphia, when Amtrak would have sufficed, as well as a trip to the Aspen Ideas Festival, a potent symbol of the elitism Trump had denounced during the campaign.Trump was furious, and Price resigned at the end of the month, after offering to pay back $52,000 of his travel costs. The total cost of his taxpayer-funded jaunts is estimated to be $1 million.Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom PriceZACH GIBSON/GETTYThis behavior is outrageous—but also puzzling, since Trump’s Cabinet has been estimated to be worth at least $4 billion, making this White House the wealthiest in American history. These were people, we’d been told, who were sacrificing lucrative private-sector posts to work in the service of the American people. Now, those very same “forgotten Americans” were paying for Mnuchin, worth as much as $500 million, because he apparently didn’t want to go through airport security. In his Cabinet are many people who went to Ivy League universities, worked for Fortune 500 corporations. They had to know better. And if they didn’t, how can we trust them?“Power and stupidity are close companions,” said Teachout when I asked her to explain how so many Cabinet members could make the same mistake, and make it so frequently. “They are actually living in a world in which they can’t see the ways in which they are being corrupted,” she speculated. “You’re so powerful that you don't even understand that a chartered flight isn’t a right.”A senior White House official noted that it had not been the White House’s job to micromanage Cabinet-level travel plans in prior administrations. Now, those plans need approval from Chief of Staff John F. Kelly. David J. Apol, who heads the Office of Government Ethics, recently wrote a memorandum that had him “deeply concerned that the actions of some in Government leadership have harmed perceptions about the importance of ethics.” (OGE would not make Apol available for an interview with Newsweek.)But Apol’s dismay, however welcome, is not enough for all those who believe the Trump administration is unwilling to face up to its ethical shortcomings. “You don’t see any shame here,” says E.J. Dionne Jr., the Washington Post columnist and co-author of the new book One Nation After Trump.“And that’s really disturbing.”The Great EnablerOn the morning of November 9, Teachout was dealing with a personal political loss: The night before, she had lost to Republican John J. Faso for a House of Representatives seat in the Hudson River Valley, north of New York City. Teachout had run an anti-corruption campaign, while Faso was a fairly conventional Northeastern Republican who never resolved his apparent unease about Trump. Voters apparently did not mind.Sometime that day, she spoke to a Clinton critic who may have voted for Trump (he only revealed that he hadn't voted for Clinton). “I just want to put a stick in the stream,” he told her. The vote a small act of defiance, since New York State was safely Democratic. But even a small vote can be telling. By possibly casting a ballot for Trump, the man indicated his profound exasperation with the political system, as well as his conviction that only a wholesale reimagination of what government did—and how—could make Americans believe in government again. Even if it wasn’t clear what Trump meant by “drain the swamp,” the image powerfully evoked a righteous cleansing, a renewal of the tired, infertile land.“The language of corruption is incredibly powerful,” Teachout says, and Trump’s campaign harnessed that power to great effect. But the transition to governing presented new challenges, foremost among them questions about the inscrutable, transnational Trump Organization, which has included everything from a line of steaks to a new hotel in the heart of D.C., in a building leased from the very federal apparatus he now controls.On January 11, just days before the presidential inauguration, Trump held a press conference at Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan to address ethics issues surrounding his administration. “I could actually run my business and run the government at the same time,” he boasted. His tax lawyer, Sheri A. Dillon, described a vague arrangement in which Trump would not manage his businesses, but also not disassociate from them. On a table next to Trump were stacks of papers, presumably relating to his finances. A reporter’s photograph suggested the papers were blank, just for show.“The tone was set by the president when he decided not to divest,” says Walter M. Shaub Jr., who’d been appointed by Trump’s predecessor, Obama, as the head of OGE, and who remained in that post during the transition and first five and a half months of Trump’s tenure. He says this administration “came in unprepared for the rigors” of working within the federal government, “unaware of the fact that there are many requirements and a culture of accountability to the public."Shaub blames a lot of the ethical lapses on White House counsel Donald McGahn II, whom he charges with fostering an anything-goes atmosphere by interpreting rules and laws in ways that allowed Trump to skirt them. “He has been the great enabler. And he has been an amplifier of the message that ethics doesn’t matter.” McGahn did not respond to a Newsweek request for comment.Don McGahn, then general counsel for the Trump transition team, in the lobby at Manhattan's Trump Tower on November 15, 2016. Now, as White House counsel, McGahn represents the Office of the Presidency, which comprises the chief executive and also the White House staff and the institution as a whole.DREW ANGERER/GETTYA senior White House official who was only authorized to speak on background disputed the assertion that the Trump administration has not made ethics a priority. He says the lawyers working on ethics issues in the White House are “not shrinking violets” and points to the elevation of their office to deputy status, presumably giving those lawyers greater sway. The office is headed by Stefan C. Passantino, deputy assistant to the president and deputy counsel to the president, who, upon his appointment, was praisedby Howard Dean, a former Democratic primary candidate for the presidency and governor of Vermont. “I have a lot of confidence that he will be clear about what the ethical and legal boundaries are in his advice to the White House,” Dean said at the time.One individual who worked with Passantino in the early days of the Trump administration described him as courteous and eager about toiling in the federal government’s employ, a welcome contrast to the surly attitudes of some other high-ranking Trump officials. At the same time, this individual says Passantino was diligently figuring out how to dismantle regulations. He notes that among Passantino’s previous legal clients is Gingrich, who was sanctioned by the House of Representatives over ethical violations.A telling episode took place on February 9, when senior administration counselor Kellyanne Conway went on Fox & Friendsto defend Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and one of his most trusted advisers. Ivanka also runs a fashion business, but Nordstrom’s had recently dropped her line after protests by liberal activists who sought to have the department store sever all affiliations with the Trump family. Conway defended Ivanka, speaking on live television from the White House: “Go buy Ivanka’s stuff is what I would tell you.… I’m going to give a free commercial here. Go buy it today, everybody.”This seemed a flagrant violation of ethics rules, which prohibit elected officials from endorsing a commercial enterprise. Shaub sent a letter to Passantino, informing him that “there is strong reason to believe that Ms. Conway has violated the Standards of Conduct and that disciplinary action is warranted.” Passantino wrote back that Conway “made the statement in question in a light, off-hand manner while attempting to stand up for a person she believed had been unfairly treated and did so without nefarious motive or intent to benefit personally." In a footnote, Passantino interpreted federal rules to conclude that Shaub’s office, OGE, did not have oversight over the executive office of the president, meaning that he could not sanction Conway over the endorsement.Shaub was stunned. “The assertion is incorrect, and the letter cites no legal basis for it,” he wrote Passantino. To him, this was evidence that the Trump administration sought not only to disregard ethics rules, but to actively dismantle them. He quit OGE on July 6 and deemed the administration he was leaving behind “pretty close to a laughingstock.” He has been making similarly withering critiques on social media and CNN, which he joined as a contributor in September.Shaub’s migration to cable news has annoyed supporters of President Trump. Another CNN regular is Richard W. Painter, who was the chief ethics lawyer for George W. Bush and is vice chair of the group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, suing Trump over the emoluments clause. Another CREW member, its chair and sometime CNN commentator, is Norman L. Eisen, who occupied the same position in the White House of President Obama. The White House senior official I spoke to expressed dismay at this “machinery” of outrage, calibrated perfectly to a liberal viewing audience.When I raised these concerns to Shaub, he laughed them off as “deeply cynical.” He knew that the White House thought of him. He wasn’t bothered by it.It’s a Swamp Thing; You Wouldn’t UnderstandThe most significant action by Trump to drain the swamp was taken a week into his presidency. On January 28, he signed Executive Order 13770, titled “Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Appointees.” All such appointees had to pledge that they would not lobby the agency to which they were appointed for five years after leaving it; they would abide by restrictions regarding contact with agency officials; would not lobby foreign governments after working for the administration; would not accept gifts from lobbyists; and would follow other regulations.Shah calls it “the most sweeping Executive Order in U.S. history to end the revolving door” between 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the lobbying firms of K Street, singling out the injunction against foreign lobbying in particular. In some ways, the order is not dissimilar from what was in place during the Obama administration.US President Donald Trump signs an executive order on ethics commitments by the executive branch appointees in the Oval Office of the White House on January 28, 2017, in Washington, DCMANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTYBut Eisen thinks the widespread granting of ethics waivers by the administration—that is, permits to violate the new rules—completely undermine the executive order. “They’ve made a mockery of the executive order and of ethics in general,” he cried out when I called him, claiming that the Trump administration has “virtually no standard” on how such waivers are granted. Fourteen such waivers had been granted as of May 31.While Trump officials have described the executive order as being not much different from the one that guided the Obama administration, Eisen finds that assertion preposterous: “It’s an ethics calamity of a kind we have never seen in modern presidential history.” In June, a liberal super PAC called American Bridge 21st Century found 74 lobbyists working in the administration, 49 of them in agencies they once lobbied on behalf of clients. The new deputy administrator of the EPA, for example, is former coal lobbyist Andrew R. Wheeler.“This will not take away one vote,” says Sam Nunberg, a longtime Trump associate who was fired from the presidential campaign in 2015.That may be the case. It may also be shortsighted. Painter, the former Bush lawyer, is a Republican “Never Trumper” who endorsed Clinton in the general election. He thinks Trump isn’t just eviscerating ethics laws but destroying the conservative movement that, for decades, preached moral responsibility and fiscal prudence. “This,” he laments, “could be the end of the Republican Party.”Cummings, the Democrat from Maryland, has begun to investigate the travel habits of Trump administration cabinet members. Yet he believes that Republicans will ultimately protect the president himself. "They've come to basically accept his conduct," Cummings told me."The things he is doing, he could not do without the Republicans in Congress aiding and abetting." It is not clear what they will get in return. If Painter is right, it won't be much.As for the “drain the swamp” plan, with its vision of purified Washington? I managed to find the link to the original press release and, feeding it into my browser, was transported to those late October days when pundits mused about whether Clinton would take Arizona and whether Trump would start a television network of his own.The link loaded, but the page was empty.DONALD J. TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT, INC.This article has been updated to more accurately reflect the status of the inquiry into Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's travel.