In a recent editorial, The Economist, one of the world’s oldest and most respected business magazines, asked if Covid-19 has killed globalisation. If one removes the reference to the coronavirus, it’s a question that could have been asked at any point over the past five years.
In the West, a long postwar period of greater prosperity suffered a body blow with the outbreak of the great financial crisis in 2008. The recession was followed by an era of austerity as governments heeded calls to tighten their belts in the wake of unprecedented spending and borrowing aimed at rescuing the banking system.
That period itself was preceded by an era that at face value looked to be characterised by an impressive rise in living standards. If ever a case study was needed to show the shortcomings of GDP numbers and other conventional measures of wealth, the 1990s and the years leading up to the financial crisis a decade ago provide it.
Some of the initial signs are not promising. With the virus perhaps the only one in living memory that has hit the entire world almost simultaneously, one might have hoped for a common, united front to fight it. The opposite seems true.
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