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The COVID-19 pandemic has placed almost the entire world on lockdown. The current crisis is often compared to historic events such as the two World Wars, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 or 9/11. The worst-case modeling of the spread of the novel coronavirus predicts millions of deaths on top of...
Many Western governments are willing to climb any mountain and pay any price to save lives. In the process, many of them are also politicizing their response to the coronavirus pandemic while acting too late and too meekly, setting the stage for what is yet to come. The West can learn a lot from...
US President Donald Trump will go down in history as the ultimate master of hyperreal politics. No matter how far he deviates from reality, the American public consistently expresses its approval. The further he wanders from rationality, even when the consequences are measurable in the number of...
The topic of nearly every conversation right now is centered around COVID-19, and rightfully so. The recently announced coronavirus pandemic is already changing life as we know it, and for many people, life will take an even stranger turn over the next few weeks, months and maybe even years....
Last week, I looked at some real economy and financial channels that the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted across the world. A global recession is now a foregone conclusion, and it will have emanated from the harsh impact on the economy. On the one hand is the supply side, with production...
In an article for Foreign Affairs, “The Real Pandemic Danger Is Social Collapse,” the economist Branko Milanovic, noted for his groundbreaking work on income and wealth inequality, takes a close look at the choices governments and societies are faced with today as the entire world organizes...
Goldman Sachs has every reason to reassure its clients in the face of a crisis that nobody but its economists are capable of understanding. They are the world-renowned experts and the guides of those who have money to invest. Goldman Sachs’ track record speaks for itself. Nobody is closer to...
*Author’s note: This article was written on March 13, 2020. Some issues and data may have changed since then. I am writing this column in a state of a latent denial. Having worked from home for much of the past week, I’ve been trying to juggle work duties with kid’s entertainment as...
The Guardian’s columnist Will Hutton, a declared Keynesian, has expressed his astonishment at the Tory government suddenly abandoning its economic orthodoxy as the appropriate response to the coronavirus pandemic. His readers certainly remember the “Cameron-Osborne austerity” of only a few...
As the global COVID-19 pandemic engulfs the world, the grand strategy of revisionist powers will either falter or accelerate. At the dawn of the post-coronavirus world — whenever it might come — the Chinese Communist Party will push forward with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which will...
Other sectors of the world economy may be suffering but the arms industry continues to do a roaring trade, and nowhere more so than in the MENA region. In its annual report released on March 9, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), notes a dramatic increase in...
