The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the world before our very eyes. In less than 3 months, it has exposed the grotesque nature of the capitalist system to millions, ground the world economy to a halt, and revealed how truly interconnected our little planet really is.
The Bank of Canada’s response to this crisis shows we have the capacity to rebuild social programs, fund Indigenous communities and transition to clean energy, what we lack is political will
“The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled,” famed Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith once wrote.
The following editorial from Britain's daily Financial Times is not revolutionary, but it's "liberal" enough to be shocking, not just interesting. This is especially true since, as someone once observed, the Financial Times is the one reliable media organ of the ruling class because the ruling class needs at least one place where they can get the straight story about what's happening.
The global pandemic of COVID-19 has spread to almost every country on the planet earth. The virus will take many lives, disrupt communities and institutions, and leave behind trauma and a devastated world economy.
From: Patrick Bond Date: April 8, 2020 at 12:33:48 PM PDT Subject:Thanks to musician John Prine - critic of King Coal in Kentucky; victim of Coronavirus
Covid-19 driven collapse of global supply chains, demand and mobility will painfully spawn next great tech-led economic models
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.
“…so many of the out-of-the way things had happened lately, that Alice has begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible” — Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
The peasants' revolt after the 14th-century plague saw off feudalism. After COVID-19, will it be the turn of capitalism?
The pandemic begins in Asia, rips through the capital cities of Europe and wipes out at least a third of all human beings in its way. When it is all over, revolts begin, cherished institutions fall, and the entire economic system has to be reconfigured.
That is a short history of the Black Death, a bubonic plague pandemic caused by the bacterium, Yersinia pestis, which spread from Mongolia to Western Europe in the 1340s.
![The Dow Jones Industrial Average is displayed after the closing bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York City on March 10, 2020 [Andrew Kelly/Reuters]](https://ecosocialistsvancouver.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/article-image/6abd634221cb4c868553b8db1e8ccf5d_18.jpg?itok=vrxSqLhO)
