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State Capitalism

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A new force in global finance

Across Asia, Russia and the Middle East, governments are using their rising economic power in new ways.

Sovereign wealth funds from the Gulf, Asia and elsewhere are buying stakes in ailing Wall Street investment banks; natural resources are falling under the control of the state; and in Russia and China there is an emphasis on economic nationalism.

To some, these developments are a sign that the era of free markets, privatisation and deregulation unleashed in the 1980s is giving way to a world in which governments use their economic strength to buy strategic assets or exert global influence.

Here we explore the forces behind the rise of ‘state capitalism’ – and how it might change the world economy

Philip Stephens: Clever conceits cannot hide the world’s jagged edges

You can always find some analogy or other from the past that can be said to illuminate the here and now. Yet upheavals in the global system since 1989 – the most profound for at least a century – are not susceptible to neatness, writes Philip Stephens

Comment: The fall of a financial model

Governments have to deal with less democratic economies that use market mechanisms for political ends, say Jean-Louis Beffa and Xavier Ragot

Comment: State capitalism’s unsettling zeitgeist

Governments backed by huge reserves have found they have enormous clout in global markets. That is especially true in downturns, writes Jeffrey Garten

Analysis: The illiberal capitalism

The belief that reform of communist economies would inevitably produce freedom has been shaken as Moscow and Beijing pursue alternatives to the western model

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