If Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister, is to be believed, the financial crisis prefigures the end of Wall Street’s hegemony and the emergence of a multipolar world. Is there any truth to this?

Attention has always been drawn to swings in power in times of crisis. The stock market crash of 1929 has often been interpreted as a transition of economic power from Great Britain to the US. Yet one must be wary of interpretations that attempt to reduce complex reality to a simple dynamic.