A few years ago, the historian William McNeill enunciated the law of Conservation of Catastrophe. The law states that solutions to one crisis lead the way for some equal or greater disaster in the future. This law may point to a future disaster in the Global Economy. Before going further into implications for the economy, I will give some examples of the law.
Forest Fires.
For over a hundred years the US Forest Service has aggressively doused any forest fire as quickly as it could. Small forest fires, usually ignited by lightning, which used to be very common are now rare. This allowed a century's worth of debris to accumulate on the forest floor -- making them into tinderboxes. Now we are seeing large uncontrollable fires fed by this debris.
More on floods, warfare, the electric grid and the global economy below.
Floods
Flood control levees along our rivers have reduced the floods that were common every springtime. The former flood plains are now covered with homes and businesses. The levees have another effect, by confining the rivers they raise the level of the rivers during flood season. When there is a very wet season, the confined rivers go high enough to flood over even the best levees, leading to widespread flooding of areas that were not originally in the flood plain.
The Electric Grid.
For the past 50 years we have been linking our once separate local electric power grids together to allow them to swap energy and avoid blackouts when a power plant fails. It works, blackouts are rare. However when they do happen, they cover not just a city or a state, but a whole region for long times.
Warfare
Someone (I cannot recall who) quipped that the main purpose of civilization is to prevent men from killing each other and raping women. Stone age men killed each other at a rate now only seen in our worst neighborhoods. Now almost all of us can walk outside in relative safety. Then there is the another other effect of civilization -- large scale war with widespread killing and rape.
The Global Economy
After the great depression, the US and the world implemented a set of financial reforms designed the prevent a repetition. These worked, for the past 70 years there has been no widespread economic collapse. Local collapses, such as the Asian economic crises, were contained within their region. Here comes the big question. Will we have an economic version of Conservation of Catastrophe in the future?