Bestselling economist Jeff Rubin warns that the shock inflation of 2021 is the front of a perfect storm of war, supply-chain disruption, geopolitical realignment, domestic upheaval, and energy scarcity that will change everything.

During the pandemic, government deficits skyrocketed to record highs while central banks primed the printing presses—and the time has come to pay for it. The ramifications of international COVID-19 spending could potentially last for decades, and inevitably one of the first consequences will be that central banks will lose control of interest rates, and subsequently, growth and inflation targets. The genie will be out of the bottle.

That is just the first symptom of a series of cascading upheavals. Supply-chain disruptions have already shown the vulnerability of the globalist model that has fueled growth for the past decades. War has not only shown the fragility of the status quo, but has revealed diplomatic and economic rifts that promise to shift trading patterns. At the same time, the precarity of the US dollar underlines the life-or-death importance of foreign markets and resources, energy in particular. And consolidation of a Eurasian bloc, from Russia to China, and encompassing old enemies like Iran and former US ally Saudi Arabia, hint that the upheaval of COVID-19 was just the beginning.

Tracking trade wars and kinetic wars, central banks and runs on banks, pipelines blown up and startups knocked down, A Map of the New Normal gives us a glimpse of a near future that will look very different from the recent past. It reminds us that our mortgage rates and job security, our grocery bills and investments, are all tied to events set in motion by governments, corporations, and black swans around the world.

Jeff Rubin's profile page

JEFF RUBIN is a Canadian economist and bestselling author. A world-leading expert on trade and energy, and former chief economist and chief strategist at CIBC World Markets, he recently served as a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance founded by Jim Balsillie. His first book, Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, was an international bestseller, and was favourably reviewed in both TIME and Newsweek. It was the number-one-selling non-fiction book in Canada and won the National Business Book Award, and was longlisted for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. Since then, he has written multiple bestsellers, including The End of Growth, The Carbon Bubble, and The Expendables.

One of CBC Books’s “26 works of Canadian non-fiction coming out in Spring 2024”

Praise for The Expendables:

“Rubin . . . leverages his firm grasp of geopolitics and economics to offer not only a primer on macroeconomics, but also on how globalization—that is, the process of opening up international markets—has routed themiddle class and propped up the elite.”
—Winnipeg Free Press

“The latest from the author of Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller continues his disruptive ways in this analysis of how the collapse of union membership and the near obsolescenceof full-time employment is squeezing out the middle class. . . .[Rubin] is a fiercely independent thinker.”
—NOW

Praise for Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller:

“Rubin’s argument is powerful.”
—Newsweek

“One of the year’s best.”
—Financial Times of London

Praise for The End of Growth:

“Clearly written and smartly argued.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Thought-provoking and accessible. . . . Rubin’s wide-ranging examination of assorted energy issues, while scarcely cheerful reading, offers acerbic insights. . . . [A] no-nonsense analysis.”
—Publishers Weekly