Bretton Woods
The economic effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic continue to appear: stock exchanges close to collapse, stagnant production, falling expectations for global growth, entire economies broken and an uncertain future for the current system.
The fragility of the international financial system can no longer be hidden, it is visible and palpable. To survive the crisis, the West becomes less and less "western", progressively denying its liberal and globalist values of open society, open borders and free markets, promoting increasingly constant and incisive state interventions, closing borders and instituting strong economic protectionism.To illustrate some of the partial effects of the crisis, we can mention some official data. Federal Reserve System's President James Bullard recently announced that 46 million people are expected to lose their jobs in the United States. The speculation concerns precisely the positions in which employees work interacting with the public. These jobs are suspended indefinitely by the sanitarian rules, which damage the income of millions of people and require a quick government attitude to guarantee a universal basic income.
In Germany, banks have already anticipated the recession and Europe's largest economy is experiencing its greatest instability in recent decades. With the overwhelming growth of the infection in the country, there is no other measure than the implementation of the quarantine and the strong action of the State to repair the economic crisis that will result from the isolation. "The coronavirus pandemic will trigger a severe downturn in Germany's economy and recession is inevitable (...) The federal government acted quickly and correctly. It seems to me that now the most important thing is to keep faith in the actions of the state", commented the Bundesbank director, Jens Weidmann, in an
interview with the newspaper
Die Welt.
The oil sector was one of the biggest affected by the economic crisis. Oil prices have almost halved since the beginning of March, amid the slowdown in market demand due to the advance of COVID-19, as well as the lack of agreement within OPEC and the unbridled increase in production in Saudi Arabia.
Bloomberg analyst David Fickling said that "future generations will never see the wealth that the Gulf States enjoy today".
Some experts already classify the pandemic as a new Great Depression. Indeed, the social and economic effects of COVID-19 are only just beginning. The crisis is far from over. The number of cases increases daily on all continents. Few countries have managed to stabilize the crisis so far.
What we can expect is an unprecedented catastrophe. As Tobin Smith, analyst and president of Transformity Research, said: "this is as a financial disaster, as a health disaster, as an economic disaster - is like we got three neutron bombs dropped on us."Predictions that the current economic order will not be able to restructure after the crisis increase day after day. Jamie Martin, a former British government adviser, believes that
the pandemic could represent the end of European liberalism and the return of an authoritarian tendency. However, if the contemporary global structure is failing, it must be reformed or replaced. But what comes after it? What will be the future of the world order? Is this the definitive end of liberalism or just the beginning of a new phase of capitalism?This week, at a remote meeting of the G-20 summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed the elaboration of a common economic recovery plan, emphasizing the need for international cooperation to overcome the effects of the current crisis. One way to lessen the impacts of the crisis, according to Putin, would be through "green corridors", free from trade wars and sanctions. The president proposes the creation of a special fund under the International Monetary Fund, which any member of the G20 could use. In his words: "At the moment, it is extremely important to guarantee access to finance for countries that need resources, especially taking into account the countries that have been affected by this crisis and this pandemic".
In fact, international organizations currently do not have the necessary tools to deal with a crisis of such dimensions, which is why two speeches may arise: the strengthening of National States and the regression of liberalism and globalization or the strengthening of the international organizations, creating new models of global governance that establish more efficient mechanisms to contain damages in crises. Both speeches are booming in public debate.What we are witnessing is the failure of a model that started in Bretton Woods in 1944, when the main economic powers came together and accorded the post-war economy. Although the Bretton Woods agreements were overcome in the 1970s, their legacy lives on: the belief in the infinite progress of capitalism and the favoring of the US in the world economy. Subsequently, the so-called "Washington Consensus" reinforced this view and updated it for a post-industrial world and for the emergence of financial capitalism. Now, this entire legacy seems to fall apart.
In a world where natural resources are increasingly scarce and technology replaces much of the human workforce, how can we still believe in the infinite progress of capitalism?This is perhaps the time for a "new Bretton Woods", for a meeting of all world powers to define new parameters for the global economy in an era when the ecological collapse and social upheavals brought by globalization are increasingly evident and dangerous, touched by the outbreak of a deadly virus.
If a meeting of such magnitude really occurs, two models will be disputed by the world leaders: the strengthening of National States (through international cooperation and regional integration) and the strengthening of globalization through the revitalization of world organizations and global governance. One of these paths will lead to multipolarity, the other will insist on the error of a liberal globalization. We are experiencing a real "Bretton Woods moment".
Reader Comments
*My guess translation.
You don't mind chaos if it torments or tortures you?
The global coup IS saying you cant go back to work until its demands are net.
It is increasingly conditioning the people to a slavery status under narratives that are wilfully enforced BY the people.
The Dream of embracing Life on Earth - rather than controlling it, may be from a seed that has to come through the experience of the nightmare of becoming trapped in a fear and control-mind in substitution for the true heart of knowing - from which an embrace of life is not only possible - but already given in our true creation.
Layers of mind-control make a world in conflict with 'What Is' - but What Is' simply Is.
Recognising by loss of peace that we are phished of our true identity is the willingness to stop reactive thinking and listen or feel for the truth that moves everything as one or at once. This sense of our self and being is not manufactured or weaponised, and is of a quality of wholeness at its core. Doesn't matter that we 'lose it' over and over again, what matters to us is where we assign worth, value, meaning or fulfilment - because in any moment that choice or decision sets the basis of our perception of self and world - and aligns the experience by response. If the nightmare runs on old choices that not only don't serve us but serve us up to a painful or frightening futility, we have more willingness to break the habit by stepping away from drama and aligning in willingness for a peace that that world cannot give us - because it is made from conflict, but CAN reflect in any truly appreciated or shared moment - of any seeming 'shape or size'. It is the quality that counts - not whether it fits our habit-thinking of the need for armour or impact, leverage or ammunition.
Being yourself does not HAVE to wait on demands being met by conditions or others.
Living Life on Earth can be part of a deeper dream than attempts to fear and fight over its unfolding. But I understand we have fear and grievance and rage in our hearts. Is it put there by a mind to which the heart has become enslaved? Are trying to run on 'backwards'?
Living the moment at hand is true with-ness. Extending and sharing any moment of a true appreciation is true worth-ship. But not as virtue signalling by which to 'cover story' the false, conflicted or loveless, and thus hide and protect it under false flag narratives in which to become fixated by reaction.
The uncovering, revelation or apocalypse of the underlying truth passes through the exposure and undoing of layers or complexes of the attempt to hide it - and hide from it.
Truth is already true, but our acceptance and thus alignment is in the grace of our freedom to notice and release the false - or what is not truly belonging to us - so as to wholly accept what Is.
The themes being acted out have lessons for us all. There is pain in the heart under compulsive scarcity driven fear. Feeling what we feel without giving it Reality, is the way of uncovering the script that runs in our name from inherited and acquired conditionings or habits of adaptation to conflicted self and world.
In this sense order replaces peace - where peace is not an external condition of control, but the balance point of inner-outer synchronicity.
Peace is communication as Open System - or Life (but not as thinking judges it).
The integration of closed system cells or selves, (or planetary consciousnesses &etc) within their total environment is a balancing act - just as walking requires balance AND losing balance - both.
One cannot impose balance from 'outside' (as if there is such a place) without setting equal opposite reactions and generating a self-inhibiting structure of containment that generates further instabilities that may be fitted to a narrative of 'control' while actually resulting in lockdown, paralysis and death.
Balance or equilibrium is therefore lived FROM and not sought after from a judgement of chaos made 'Lord'.
A mind exclusively identifying itself physically will channel Creative Power through the lens of a reversal of misidentification. Abundance of lack, debt, conflict and struggle then manifests the power of Life given to attempts to possess and control in image and form.
A Prodigal mistaken Inheritance - but from which 'to arrive at our starting place - and know it for the first time' (T.S Elliot).
Panic is chaos given Lordship.
See how it works.
There is NO peace in it.
Recognising this truth, do you WANT this?
That is enough to let what you truly want, register with you.
Self isolation is not only impossible but futile.
However, to separate from that which separates to conflict and division so as to regain and restore your peace, is to listen in the heart while the mind serves.