Author

Ian Bremmer is the president of Eurasia Group, a leading global political risk research and consulting firm.

In 1998, Bremmer founded Eurasia Group with just $25,000. Today, the company has offices in New York, Washington, and London, as well as a network of experts and resources around the world. Eurasia Group provides financial, corporate, and government clients with information and insight on how political developments move markets.

Bremmer created Wall Street’s first global political risk index, and has authored several books, including the national bestseller, The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?, which details the new global phenomenon of state capitalism and its geopolitical implications. He also wrote The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall, which was selected by The Economist as one of the best books of 2006, and The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing. Bremmer is a contributor for the Wall Street Journal and writes “The Call” blog on ForeignPolicy.com; he has also published articles in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Newsweek, Harvard Business Review, and Foreign Affairs. He is a panelist for CNN International’s “Connect the World” and appears regularly on CNBC, Fox News Channel, National Public Radio, and other networks.

Bremmer has a PhD in political science from Stanford University (1994), and was the youngest-ever national fellow at the Hoover Institution. He presently teaches at Columbia University, and has held faculty positions at the EastWest Institute and the World Policy Institute. In 2007, he was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. His analysis focuses on global macro political trends and emerging markets, which he defines as “those countries where politics matter at least as much as economics for market outcomes.” Bremmer grew up in Boston, and now lives in New York and Washington, DC.

Other books by the author:

The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall

The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing

    LINKS

    The Call: Ian Bremmer’s blog at foreignpolicy.com

    Eurasia Group on Twitter

    Eurasia Group on Facebook

    INTERVIEW EXCERPT

    You’ve written that free markets must now compete with the rise of something called “state capitalism.” What is that?

    State capitalism is a system in which the state acts as the dominant economic player and uses markets to advance political goals. It’s a trend we see primarily in China, Russia, and the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf, but individual elements of it exist in democracies like Brazil and India. In this system, governments use national oil companies and other state-owned enterprises to create and maintain large numbers of jobs. They use select privately owned companies to dominate certain economic sectors. They use so-called sovereign wealth funds to invest their extra cash in ways that maximize the state’s profits. In all three cases, the state is using markets to create wealth that can be directed as political officials see fit. And in all three cases, the ultimate motive is not economic (maximizing growth) but political (maximizing the state’s power and the leadership’s chances of survival).

    National oil companies and even sovereign wealth funds have been around for many years, haven’t they? How and why have they become a threat to free-market capitalism?

    Yes, some of these tools have been… Keep Reading