Global Recession

A Silver Lining In The Global Pandemic

April 29, 2020 Michael T. Klare, Tom Dispatch. Educate! climate crisis, Global Recession, Oil and Gas, Pandemic

Energy analysts have long assumed that, given time, growing international concern over climate change would result in a vast restructuring of the global energy enterprise. The result: a greener, less climate-degrading system. In this future, fossil fuels would be overtaken by renewables, while oil, gas, and coal would be relegated to an increasingly marginal role in the global energy equation. In its World Energy Outlook 2019, for example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted that, by 2040, renewables would finally supersede petroleum as the planet’s number one source of energy and coal would largely disappear from the fuel mix. As a result of Covid-19, however, we may no longer have to wait another 20 years for such a cosmic transition to occur -- it’s happening right now.

Five Proposals For A Better World After The Pandemic

April 29, 2020 Climate and Capitalism. Create! Capitalism, Global Recession, New Economy, Pandemic

Covid-19 has shaken the world. It has already led to the loss or devastation of countless lives, while many people in vital professions are working day and night to attend to the sick and stop further spread. Personal and social losses, and the fight to stop these, demand our continued respect and support. At the same time, it is critical to view this pandemic in historical context in order to avoid repeating past mistakes when we plan for the future. The fact that Covid-19 has already had such a major economic impact is due, amongst other factors, to the economic development model that has been dominant globally over the last 30 years. This model demands ever-growing circulation of goods and people, despite the countless ecological problems and growing inequalities it generates.

COVID-19 Great Depression: Global Ecosocialism Is The Way Out

April 28, 2020 Gilbert Mercier, News Junkie Post. Create! COVID-19, Ecosocialism, Global Recession, wealth inequality

The abstract science of mathematics is a language like music. But while music is in the realm of pure emotion, the language of mathematics only speaks to the mind not the heart. Numbers and equations do not lie. They are not, by essence, subjective. This being said, when the numbers are those of the dead, they can have the chilling emotional effect of a meat cleaver cutting through bones. While we have tried to stay away from the mainstream media litany of the death tolls, on April 25, 2020, we had passed 200,000 deaths globally. In the United States alone, by the end of April, the COVID-19 pandemic will have killed more people than the reported 58,220 US soldiers who died during the Vietnam war.

The Pandemic And The Global Economy

April 24, 2020 Jayati Ghosh, Dissent Magazine. Educate! Capitalism, Global Recession, Globalization, Pandemic

There are still many uncertainties about the COVID-19 pandemic: about the extent of its spread, its severity in different countries, the length of the outbreak, and whether an initial decline could be followed by a recurrence. But some things are already certain: we know that the economic impact of this pandemic is already immense, dwarfing anything that we have experienced in living memory. The current shock to the global economy is certainly much bigger than that of the 2008 global financial crisis, and is likely to be more severe than the Great Depression. Even the two world wars of the twentieth century, while they disrupted supply chains and devastated physical infrastructure and populations, did not involve the restrictions on mobility and economic activity that are in place in the majority of countries today.

Lebanese Protesters Return To Streets

April 24, 2020 Press TV. Resist! Global Recession, Government, Lebanon, Pandemic

The car convoys formed across the capital, the northwestern city of Tripoli, and the southwestern city of Sidon on Tuesday. In Beirut, cars thronged around the UNESCO Palace, which was chosen by Speaker Nabih Berri to host the parliament’s first reconvention since the legislature was shut down for contagion fears. The pandemic has so far infected 677 people and killed 21 in the country. Cars were seen draped in Lebanese flag, with drivers honking their horns and protesters shouting slogans while leaning out in facemasks. The lingering protests receded to some extent in January, when the country swore in a new government. They, however, resumed Friday in Tripoli, where locals reportedly showed up in their hundreds.

After The Pandemic: A Ten-Point Plan For The Collective Provision Of Basic Needs

April 23, 2020 The Foundational Economy Collective, Resilience.org. Create! Basic Necessities, COVID-19, Global Recession, New Economy

This manifesto is an intervention by a Europe-wide group of academics – the foundational economy collective – who have for several years in books and articles argued that policy makers need to balance concern with jobs and wages with more attention to essential goods and services like housing, food, utility supply, health, education and care. The provision of all of these things relies on the collective organisation of much larger systems; if group provision breaks down, citizens cannot buy their way out through individual consumption. This foundational economy is often invisible, buried within the abstract idea of the economy and neglected by policymakers who focus on high tech and tradeable sectors. But during this coronavirus pandemic it has become highly visible because societies are shutting down everything except those parts of the economy providing essential foundational goods and services.

France And Germany Join 10 EU Countries In Call For Green Recovery

April 23, 2020 By Frédéric Simon, Euractiv.com. Create! European Union (EU), Global Recession, Green New Deal, Pandemic

Paris and Berlin have added their names to a growing list of EU capitals asking for the European Green Deal to be placed at the heart of the EU’s post-pandemic recovery plan. The Green Deal “must be central to a resilient recovery after COVID-19,” EU environment ministers wrote in an opinion piece published on Climate Home News, a specialised information site. “The Green Deal provides us with a roadmap to make the right choices in responding to the economic crisis while transforming Europe into a sustainable and climate neutral economy,” the ministers wrote in the commentary piece. “We should withstand the temptations of short-term solutions in response to the present crisis that risk locking the EU in a fossil fuel economy for decades to come,” the text reads.

COVID-19 Will Double Number Of People Facing Food Crises

April 22, 2020 World Food Programme. Educate! COVID-19, Food and Agriculture, Global Recession, Poverty

The COVID-19 pandemic could almost double the number of people suffering acute hunger, pushing it to more than a quarter of a billion by the end of 2020, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today as it and other partners released a new report on food crises around the world. The number of people facing acute food insecurity (IPC/CH 3 or worse) stands to rise to 265 million in 2020, up by 130 million from the 135 million in 2019, as a result of the economic impact of COVID-19, according to a WFP projection. The estimate was announced alongside the release of the Global Report on Food Crises, produced by WFP and 15 other humanitarian and development partners. In this context, it is vital that food assistance programme be maintained, including WFP’s own programmes which offer a lifeline to almost 100 million vulnerable people globally.

The Pandemic Is An Opportunity For Major Change

April 22, 2020 George Lakey, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! COVID-19, Global Recession, Pandemic, Transformation

The pandemic is many things for many people. For a lot of activists, it offers both frustration and opportunity. It’s frustrating not to be able to stage a sit-in or picket line. The opportunity, though, is the shake-up in politics and society: History shows many examples of when a convulsive historic event altered conditions in such a way as to promote positive change. That happened with the Great Depression in the United States and World War II in the U.K. Both societies took a leap forward in terms of progressive social, economic and cultural change. It’s not that anyone would wish for the shake-up, given its enormous pain and suffering. But massive history-making events don’t ask our opinion. They are what they are. The question is, what do we make of them? In Christopher Fry’s anti-war play, “A Sleep of Prisoners,” a character says, “Affairs are now soul size.”

Could COVID-19 Spell The End Of The Fracking Industry?

April 19, 2020 Dahr Jamail, Truthout. Educate! COVID-19, Fracking, Global Recession, New Mexico, Oil and Gas

It has always been known that the oil and gas industry only survives by way of debt financing. Fracking is capital intensive, and very few companies involved ever actually even turn a profit in excess of the cost of capital. Instead, they have always operated by dependency on cheap money from Wall Street banks to finance their drilling and operations. Fred Nathan is the executive director of Think New Mexico, an independent nonpartisan statewide think tank whose mission is “to improve the quality of life for all New Mexicans, especially those who lack a strong voice in the political process.” Nathan said that the contraction of the oil and gas industry in New Mexico is a “cause for deep concern” for the state budget, because every time the price of a barrel of oil drops $1, the state’s general fund takes a $22 million hit.

Total System Failure Will Give Rise To New Economy

April 14, 2020 Pepe Escobar, Information Clearinghouse. Educate! Global Recession, New Economy, Poverty, Technology

Nobody, anywhere, could have predicted what we are now witnessing: in a matter of only a few weeks the accumulated collapse of global supply chains, aggregate demand, consumption, investment, exports, mobility. Nobody is betting on an L-shaped recovery anymore – not to mention a V-shaped one. Any projection of global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 gets into falling-off-a-cliff territory. In industrialized economies, where roughly 70% of the workforce is in services, countless businesses in myriad industries will fail in a rolling financial collapse that will eclipse the Great Depression. That spans the whole spectrum of possibly 47 million US workers soon to be laid off – with the unemployment rate skyrocketing to 32% – all the way to Oxfam’s warning that by the time the pandemic is over half of the world’s population of 7.8 billion people could be living in poverty.

No Turning Back After Central Bankers’ ‘Seismic Stimulus Shift’

April 7, 2020 Francesco Canepa and Balazs Koranyi, Reuters. Create! Central Bank, Debt, Federal Reserve, Global Recession

The tools used by the Federal Reserve and the central banks in the euro zone and Japan differ slightly but they mostly involve new, massive purchases of financial assets and cheap credit for banks and companies. At their core, they all revolve around one concept: gobbling up private and public debt, which has been growing for a long time and is bound to explode as the pandemic hampers borrowers’ ability to pay and bumps up government spending. Each central bank, albeit to varying degrees, is still paying lip service to the notions of independence from politics, a foundation of central banking since the 1980s. But as they hoover up a growing share of their country’s public and private debt, “coordination” between fiscal and monetary authorities has become the new mantra among policymakers.

Pipelines Are Still Being Built As The Economy Shuts Down

April 7, 2020 Leanna First-Arai, Truthout. Educate! Global Recession, Oil and Gas, Pipelines

Governors of at least 37 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have issued strict orders for residents providing “non-life-sustaining” services to remain inside. All but five states have at least some form of shelter-in-place policies underway, such that millions of workers deemed “non-essential,” like teachers, therapists and community organizers, are clocking hours on Instagram and Zoom from living rooms across the continent. Over half of all small businesses in the U.S. are closed or could close within the coming weeks. And yet, although you cannot eat, drink or be ventilated by the fossil fuel industry’s products, oil and gas companies are carrying on with plans to dig and lay down pipelines in multiple Canadian provinces, and states including Minnesota, Montana, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

COVID-19: The Capitalist Emperor Has No Clothes

April 6, 2020 Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. Educate! American Exceptionalism, Capitalism, COVID-19, Global Recession

As the capitalist emperor strolls down the avenue of U.S. public opinion butt-naked but for the first time since the 1930s, more and more people are starting to realize that they were not crazy. The brutal failures of the capitalist system that they saw were not a figment of their imagination or a diversion from their own personal failures. Instead, they were the awful reality of degradation, dehumanization and social insecurity embedded in the system. Many could see that reality but wouldn’t allow themselves to believe their own eyes and experiences. They couldn’t call it out like the kid in the fable – until now. The claim that the U.S. was an exceptional nation and that the capitalist order represented the highest expression of human development has been shattered by the second global collapse of the capitalist order within twelve years.

These Migrant Workers Did Not Suddenly Fall From the Sky

April 5, 2020 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! COVID-19, Global Recession, Hunger, India, Poverty

Madness engulfs the planet. Hundreds of millions of people are in lockdown in their homes, millions of people who work in essential jobs – or who cannot afford to stay home without state assistance – continue to go to work, thousands of people lie in intensive-care beds taken care of by tens of thousands of medical professionals and caregivers who face shortages of equipment and time. Narrow sections of the human population – the billionaires – believe that they can isolate themselves in their enclaves, but the virus knows no borders. The global pandemic driven by the variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus holds us in its grip; even as China seems to have bent the curve of infections, the charts for the rest of the world are forbidding: the light at the end of the tunnel is as dim as it has ever been.

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