You might recognise the inspiration behind this week’s cover design: “Reservoir Dogs”, a gangster film from 1992. Donald Trump has assumed the role of kingpin; behind him are some of the main players in a new, mafia-like struggle for global power. Call it The Don’s new world order, a might-is-right world in which big powers cut deals and bully small ones. In a week in which Germany’s probable next chancellor warned that NATO may soon be dead and America sided with Russia and North Korea against Ukraine and Europe at the United Nations, we decided to take a hard look at what this new gangster-style approach to geopolitics would lead to.

Team Trump claims that its dealmaking will bring peace and that, after 80 years of being taken for a ride, America will turn its superpower status into profit. Our leader argues that it will instead make the world more dangerous, and America weaker and poorer. Advocates of dealmaking assume that America can get what it wants by bargaining. Yet as Mr Trump exploits decades-old dependencies, America’s leverage will rapidly fall away. Congress, financial markets or voters could yet persuade him to walk back. But the world has already started planning for a lawless era.
 
Our other cover, for readers in Europe, looks at the importance of hereditary wealth, which is rising around the rich world, especially in the old continent. People in rich countries stand to inherit around $6trn this year, about 10% of GDP. Inheritances are around twice as big, relative to the size of the economy, as they were in the middle of the 20th century. That is a problem. Whether a young person can afford to buy a house and live in comfort is now determined by inherited wealth nearly as much as by their own success at work. This shift has alarming economic and social consequences, because it imperils not just the meritocratic ideal, but capitalism itself. More wealth means more inheritance for baby-boomers to pass on. And because wealth is far more unequally distributed than income, a new inheritocracy is being born.