It's the End of the World Economy as We Know It

[Zorro]

Experts suggest there will be “a rethink of how much any country wants to be reliant on any other country.”

When big convulsive economic events happen, the implications tend to take years to play out, and spiral in unpredictable directions.

Who would have thought that a crisis that began with mortgage defaults in American suburbs in 2007 would lead to a fiscal crisis in Greece in 2010? Or that a stock market crash in New York in 1929 would contribute to the rise of fascists in Europe in the 1930s?

The world economy is an infinitely complicated web of interconnections. We each have a series of direct economic relationships we can see: the stores we buy from, the employer that pays our salary, the bank that makes us a home loan. But once you get two or three levels out, it’s really impossible to know with any confidence how those connections work.

And that, in turn, shows what is unnerving about the economic calamity accompanying the spread of the novel coronavirus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/upshot/world-economy-restructuring-coronavirus.html

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Or, the beginning of a new one?

[OnDoutside]

2. Economist David McWilliams discussed all this on his latest podcast here

https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=68802906&refid=asa

Ignore the first 8 minutes and 40 seconds, but really informative after that.

[RussBLib]

3. new minimum wage: $20/hour

that's just one minimum that seems like a good idea, but it will be a hard sell to convince everyone that this upheaval justifies economic measures like that.

having everyone covered by health insurance of some kind seems like an easier sell.