In a recent interview on Meet the Press, financier Ray Dalio, warned of “something worse than a recession” if current financial, economic, and trade issues are not “handled well.” Later in the interview, he warned that if current problems worsen, we could experience a “world order in which there is great conflict.” I agree on both counts—with the caveat that this might be an understatement. Others have issued similar warnings.

For me, Dalio’s comments triggered troubling thoughts on how the world would handle a future financial crisis. During my long career on the international stage—as economic advisor to Henry Kissinger in the National Security Council in the 1970s, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs (international) in the 1980s and 1990s, and then Undersecretary of State in charge of U.S. geo-economic relations in the early part of this century—I was at the epicenter of a number of such crises and of negotiations to help resolve them. The key to success in such efforts was not just the financial skills of the major players but also their willingness to engage in trustful collaboration.

That ingredient does not exist today. Never have I seen the world so deeply riddled with mistrust on so many economic and political issues. And that mistrust can be the Achilles’ heel of any future negotiation in the event of a new financial crisis—unless we recognize it and figure out how to overcome it before a crisis hits.

Those in high-level positions and around the world must consider how they would manage a new crisis—which is a growing risk with so many countries facing slowing growth, growing debt, inflationary pressures, tariff wars, and currency volatility—and operating under fraught and confrontational political circumstances. 

This will be an enormous challenge, and failure will affect all Americans and nearly every person on this planet.

During the last crisis, there was impressive, trustful cooperation between the U.S. and China. But with the intensifying trade war and various other confrontations between the two, attaining that again is likely to be far more problematic—if not impossible.

And tariff-related frictions between the U.S. and its key allies—among the world’s largest market economies—have undermined and in some cases virtually destroyed the mutual trust that has been so critical in resolving issues in the past. Intense trade disputes will make cooperation among them to deal with a new financial crisis far more difficult.

On top of this, a study is underway in Washington as to whether the U.S. should withdraw from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—the critical global institution in such matters. And questions are being raised at high levels in the U.S. administration as to whether the president should fire Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve. Powell enjoys very high credibility in markets and among policymakers around the world and would be an essential player in finding solutions to any new crisis. Both factors add to already high uncertainty and the risks of deepening instability.

Given this rancor, friction, and uncertainty, central bankers and finance ministries of countries who were instrumental in dealing with crises in the past—who are now meeting in Washington for what are known at the IMF Spring Meetings—need to figure out how to avoid, or cope with, the increasingly dangerous threat of a major financial crisis. 

In the past, there was usually one major nation that led the process, or served as the designated convenor of the key players. That was mainly the United States, in cooperation with the IMF. If the U.S. won’t be willing to do so this time, or won’t be trusted by others to do so, who will it be?

It hasn’t always been the U.S. France, under its president Valerie Giscard d’Estiang, for example, pulled the G7 together during a series of crises in the 1970s, and its current president Emmanuel Macron has a formidable financial background, as does Canada’s new prime minister Mark Carney. Or, we might rightly ask, will any country be in a position, or be given broad international support, to play this role? If not, the global economy is condemned to major disruption. (China, now a formidable and experienced player in global finance, might look at this moment as an opportunity to step up to play a leadership role, but it is difficult to see the U.S., or some other market economies, agreeing to that.) 

The financial community, already rattled by uncertainty, economic nationalism, deepening tariff wars, massive debt increases, and market-debilitating currency instability, should put this on their high-concern list as well, and press political and financial leaders in their countries and around the world to organize a contingency plan grounded in a collaborative effort. With statesmanship, will, and trust this can be done—as in the past. But without a lot of advanced planning, and a willingness to engage in trustful collaboration, a major global financial disaster could be on the horizon.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s Republican-dominated Senate and its elected Republican treasurer faced off Monday in an extraordinary hearing as senators try to kick state treasurer Curtis Loftis out of office over a $1.8 billion accounting error.

The hearing is the culmination of over two years of investigation by the Senate that started when state accountants unintentionally exaggerated money given to colleges and universities by $3.5 billion.

That led to the discovery of an account error that started a decade ago when the state was changing from one accounting system to another. If accountants couldn’t balance the entries in the two sets of books as they moved thousand of accounts with different definitions, they kept adding it to a special account year after year until it grew to $1.8 billion.

It took forensic accountants, who were paid millions of dollars in fees, to finally unravel that nearly all of the $1.8 billion was not real money but just an accumulation of errors.

The two Republican senators calling for Loftis to be kicked out of office said he can no longer be trusted to handle South Carolina’s bank accounts. They charged that he is incompetent and never reported the mistakes to lawmakers as required by law while refusing to take accountability.

“He’s a liar that was so concerned with his public appearance that he would do and say anything to cover up his mistake,” Sen. Stephen Goldfinch said.

Loftis has called the Senate investigation a witch hunt. He repeatedly said no money went missing and the errors were not made in his office, although others have testified differently. The treasurer said continuing to focus on the mistakes threatens the state’s strong credit rating.

His lawyer Deborah Barbier opened the treasurer’s three-hour case with a photo of Loftis and Republican President Donald Trump on a screen. She pointed out that he has won election four times and will face voters again in a primary in 14 months. Loftis has previously said he would not run for reelection.

“The people don’t want to be told that you are better than them,” Barbier said from a temporary lectern at the back of the state Senate chamber. “Let issues like this be decided at the ballot box.”

Senators can ask questions at the end of the hearing. The Senate would need a two-thirds vote to decide Loftis committed “willful neglect of duty” and send the matter to the House, which must also hold its own two-thirds vote to remove the treasurer.

Thirty-one of the 40 senators present on Monday will have to vote against Loftis to keep the process going.

No office holder has been removed in this way since South Carolina became a state 225 years ago.

Republican leaders in the House have given no indication whether they will take up the matter.

The books still haven’t been fully straightened out, and accountants continue to struggle with Loftis’ office and how they handle the state’s bank accounts, Grooms said.

The treasurer is trying anything to protect his 14 years in office and reputation as a competent conservative steward who is always looking out for taxpayers, Grooms said.

“Because of his failures, the self-proclaimed best friend of the taxpayer is costing the taxpayers tens of millions in legal, auditing and oversight fees,” Grooms said. “With friends like this, who needs tax-and-spend liberals.”

A Senate subcommittee held hearings to question Loftis under oath. They have been contentious. Loftis has slammed papers, accused senators of a witch hunt and threatened to get up and leave.

He did not show any outward signs of frustration or anger as the hearing started Monday.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Google is confronting an existential threat as the U.S. government tries to break up the company as punishment for turning its revolutionary search engine into an illegal monopoly.

The drama began to unfold Monday in a Washington courtroom as three weeks of hearings kicked off to determine how the company should be penalized for operating a monopoly in search. In its opening arguments, federal antitrust enforcers also urged the court to impose forward-looking remedies to prevent Google from using artificial intelligence to further its dominance.

“This is a moment in time, we’re at an inflection point, will we abandon the search market and surrender them to control of the monopolists or will we let competition prevail and give choice to future generations,” said Justice Department attorney David Dahlquist.

The proceedings, known in legal parlance as a “remedy hearing,” are set to feature a parade of witnesses that includes Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a federal judge to order a radical shake-up that would ban Google from striking the multibillion dollar deals with Apple and other tech companies that shield its search engine from competition, share its repository of valuable user data with rivals and force a sale of its popular Chrome browser.

Google’s attorney, John Schmidtlein, said in his opening statement that the court should take a much lighter touch. He said the government’s heavy-handed proposed remedies wouldn’t boost competition but instead unfairly reward lesser rivals with inferior technology.

“Google won its place in the market fair and square,” Schmidtlein said.

The moment of reckoning comes four-and-a-half-years after the Justice Department filed a landmark lawsuit alleging Google’s search engine had been abusing its power as the internet’s main gateway to stifle competition and innovation for more than a decade.

After the case finally went to trial in 2023, a federal judge last year ruled Google had been making anti-competitive deals to lock in its search engine as the go-to place for digital information on the iPhone, personal computers and other widely used devices, including those running on its own Android software.

That landmark ruling by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sets up a high-stakes drama that will determine the penalties for Google’s misconduct in a search market that it has defined since Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the company in a Silicon Valley garage in 1998.

Since that austere start, Google has expanded far beyond search to become a powerhouse in email, digital mapping, online video, web browsing, smartphone software and data centers.

Seizing upon its victory in the search case, the Justice Department is now setting out to prove that radical steps must be taken to rein in Google and its corporate parent, Alphabet Inc.

“Google’s illegal conduct has created an economic goliath, one that wreaks havoc over the marketplace to ensure that — no matter what occurs — Google always wins,” the Justice Department argued in documents outlining its proposed penalties. “The American people thus are forced to accept the unbridled demands and shifting, ideological preferences of an economic leviathan in return for a search engine the public may enjoy.”

Although the proposed penalties were originally made under President Joe Biden’s term, they are still being embraced by the Justice Department under President Donald Trump, whose first administration filed the case against Google. Since the change in administrations, the Justice Department has also attempted to cast Google’s immense power as a threat to freedom, too.

In his opening statement, Dahlquist noted that top officials from the Justice Department were in the room to watch proceedings. He said their presence indicated that the case had the full support of federal antitrust regulators, both past and present.

“The fact that this case was filed in 2020, tried in 2023, under two different administrations, and joined by 49 states demonstrates the non-partisan nature of this case and our proposed remedies,” Dahlquist said.

Dahlquist also said that Mehta would be hearing a lot about AI — “perhaps more than you want, your honor,” — and said top executives from AI companies, like ChatGPT, would be called to testify. He said the court’s remedies should include provisions to make sure that Google’s AI product, Gemini, isn’t used to strengthen its existing search monopoly.

“We believe that Google can and will attempt to circumvent the court’s remedies if it is not included,” Dahlquist said. “Gen AI is Google’s next evolution to keep their vicious cycle spinning.”

Schmidtlein, Google’s attorney, said rival AI companies had seen enormous growth in recent years and were doing “just fine.”

Google is also sounding alarms about the proposed requirements to share online search data with rivals and the proposed sale of Chrome posing privacy and security risks. “The breadth and depth of the proposed remedies risks doing significant damage to a complex ecosystem. Some of the proposed remedies would imperil browser developers and jeopardize the digital security of millions of consumers,” Google lawyers said in a filing leading up to hearings.

The showdown over Google’s fate marks the climax of the biggest antitrust case in the U.S. since the Justice Department sued Microsoft in the late 1990s for leveraging its Windows software for personal computers to crush potential rivals.

The Microsoft battle culminated in a federal judge declaring the company an illegal monopoly and ordering a partial breakup — a remedy that was eventually overturned by an appeals court.

Google intends to file an appeal of Mehta’s ruling from last year that branded its search engine as an illegal monopoly but can’t do so until the remedy hearings are completed. After closing arguments are presented in late May, Mehta intends to make his decision on the remedies before Labor Day.

The search case marked the first in a succession of antitrust cases that have been brought against a litany of tech giants that include Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms, which is currently fighting allegations of running an illegal monopoly in social media in another Washington D.C. trial. Other antitrust cases have been brought against both Apple and Amazon, too.

The Justice Department also targeted Google’s digital advertising network in a separate antitrust case that resulted last week in another federal judge’s decision that found the company was abusing its power in that market, too. That ruling means Google will be heading into another remedy hearing that could once again raise the specter of a breakup later this year or early next year.

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