The New Dark Age

Friday, 11 September 2026 — Radhika Desai – Geopolitical Economist

Is the world quietly reviving a plan the United States buried eighty years ago? Professor Michael Hudson joins me to revisit Keynes’ original Bretton Woods proposals, built on balance, capital controls, and the principle that bad debts should be written off rather than enforced into depression. Washington rejected all of it and built the dollar system instead, one designed to keep the world dependent on American credit and American rules. Now Russia, China and Iran are building the alternatives Keynes once imagined, from Lavrov’s proposed SCO development bank to China’s CIPS system shielding Iranian oil trade from US sanctions, while even the Netherlands has asked Washington to send its gold home. The dollar system is unraveling. The question is what replaces it, and whether the world has the will to build something more balanced this time.