Global Economy on Edge |Back to Analysis| |George
Friedman||August 21st 2011| Classical political economists like
Adam Smith or David Ricardo never used the term “economy” by
itself. They always used the term “political economy.” For
classical economists, it was impossible to understand politics
without economics or economics without politics. The two fields
are certainly different but they are also intimately linked. The
use of the term “economy” by itself did not begin until the late
19th century. Smith understood that while an efficient market
would emerge from individual choices, those choices were framed
by the political system in which they were made, just as the
political system was shaped by economic realities. For classical
economists, the political and economic systems were intertwined,
each dependent on the other for its existence. The current
economic crisis is best understood as a crisis of political
economy. Moreover, it has to be understood as a global crisis
enveloping the United States, Europ