THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
How To Put It
BACK TOGETHER AGAIN Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Four-score Men and Four-score more, Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before Samuel Arnold Juveline Amusements, 17971 BY LLEWELLYN VAN WYK, B. ARCH; MSC. (APPLIED), URBAN ANALYST
H
umpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg, though he is not explicitly described as such. Its origins are obscure, and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings. I thought it particularly appropriate to describe the following article – what are the impacts of Covid on the global economy and how does it recover.
Impact and Response Many commentators and economists are focusing on how governments go about rebuilding their national and city economies once the world has passed through what Christopher Joye calls the Global Virus Crisis (GVC). 2 According to The Economist, policy response has generally been swift and decisive.3 Globally central banks have cut interest rates since January 2020 and have launched new and substantial quantitative-easing schemes
8
(creating money to buy bonds) while politicians are opening the fiscal taps to support the economy. In the US, America’s Congress passed a bill that boosts spending by twice as much as President Barack Obama’s package in 2009. Britain, France, and other countries have made credit guarantees worth as much as 15% of GDP, seeking to prevent a cascade of defaults. On the most conservative measure, the global stimulus from government spending this year will exceed 2% of global GDP, a much bigger push than was seen in 2007-09. Even Germany, whose fiscal rectitude is a cultural cliché, is spending more.4 The analysts at The Economist caution though that to focus just on the quantitative changes misses something crucial which is that there are important qualitative changes under way in how policymakers manage the economy – the responsibilities they have assumed for themselves, what is seen as a legitimate action and what is not, and the criteria used to judge policy success or failure. On these measures, the analysts note,
