Corona fears have shifted the world’s central banks into hyperdrive. Talk more, do more, lend more—and buy everything that moves. One after the other, the major central banks took to the barricades, manned the canons, fired their bazookas, and every other military metaphor you can think of.
When Mario Draghi’s tenure was approaching its end, I argued for a sterner governor for the European Central Bank (ECB); hence, I was not even slightly enthusiastic when Draghi’s successor turned out to be Christine Lagarde—a patent dove, as can be inferred from her ideological proximity to a famous Keynesian like Olivier Blanchard.
Before analyzing the emergency plans that the global economy needs, we must remember that, as in the past, the prudence and responsibility of the civil society and businesses will help us to get out of this crisis .
In the face of an unprecedented crisis, we have to be realistic, responsible and cautious.
The virus has unleashed petite tyrants to haunt their tiny jurisdictions, using the cover of crisis to arrogate powers belonging to the people.
Witness Robert J. Taylor, mayor of Ostrander, Ohio (population: 643 in the 2010 census), who just declared his village to be in a “state of emergency.” Along with this declaration, the self-righteous mayor instructed constituents to get their news from “trusted sources, which may not include social media in many cases.”
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“Restaurants sit empty in Chinatowns. Parents keep children home from school in Toronto. Asian hotels and airlines reel at dramatic drops in bookings.
Many of us have experienced the empty grocery shelves, the mad run on toilet paper (Calling Mr. Bidet?), and the ubiquitous face of Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes for Health on television broadcasts. Federal and local authorities are stretching their constitutional limits well beyond anything our ancestors would have recognized in their attempts to keep people away from each other and prevent social contact. (I am currently in Sacramento, California, which just has enacted a de facto version of local martial law.)
Life in America has been reshaped dramatically in the last two weeks. The fear of the Chinese coronavirus has completely eclipsed all other news stories in the US and abroad. Among these stories is the Democratic primary race, which is apparently still going on—and where Joe Biden has managed to stumble into near presumptive-nominee status by outlasting an elderly democratic socialist from Vermont. Primaries are being postponed and forgotten for the time being, though.
