Is this the end for growth?

Money doesn’t make the world go round; energy does. And the days of cheap energy are over, according to a new book. What does this mean for civilisation? Simon Wilson reports.

Is the end of the world nigh?

Almost, according to Tim Morgan, former head of global research at Tullett Prebon. In a new book called Life After Growth, he argues that anyone expecting the global economy to bounce back from the crisis that began in 2008 radically underestimates its seriousness and misunderstands its nature. Morgan's core idea is that while economics is fixated on money, what really makes the world go round is energy. Think of two parallel economies: the "financial" economy of money and credit, and the "real" economy of energy resources, labour, goods and services. Under this model, money has no intrinsic worth, says Morgan: any value it possesses derives solely from its "tokenising" role as a "claim" on the output of the real economy today. Similarly, debt is a claim on the real economy of tomorrow.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.