Whatever old is brand-new once again.
As the world prepares a healing from the financial devastation caused by the coronavirus, long disposed of and formerly challenged concepts and ideologies all of a sudden are getting a fresh airing.
For a start, there’s been a complete turnaround in thinking when it concerns the role of federal government in managing the economy.
Where in the crisis of just a decade back, central banks practically took the operating on conserving the financial system and the international economy, this time around it is governments pumping in amazing amounts of cash.
Social welfare and safeguard, short-lived although they may be, are not the strategies most closely associated with Union federal governments who have led the charge for minimal government, if not constantly in practice, for the past half century.
Given rates of interest are at no, or barely above it, in much of the industrialized world, numerous governments were required to at last junk the austerity mantra that has so dominated our thinking. Deficits, it seems, just don’t matter any longer.
However that’s not all. There’s now a push to wind back some of the tough combated “advances” foisted upon countries by the free market philosophy that prevailed throughout the west.
For decades, open market has actually ruled. Rather of producing everything, there’s been a consensus that nations should produce the things they’re proficient at. You sell that overseas and buy in the things you require.
But in February, when China unexpectedly closed down, and the world could not purchase what it required– everything from pharmaceuticals to electronic parts and packaging– a grassroots press to be more self-reliant grasped the globe.
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