Whose coronavirus strategy worked best? Scientists hunt most effective policies Researchers sift through data to compare nations’ vastly different containment measures....... swift surveillance, quarantine and social-distancing measures, such as the use of face masks and school closures, helped to cut coronavirus transmission
‘We need to be alert’: Scientists fear second coronavirus wave as China’s lockdowns ease Other countries on lockdown will be watching for a resurgence of infections in Hubei province now that travel restrictions are lifting.
What China’s coronavirus response can teach the rest of the world Researchers are studying the effects of China’s lockdowns to glean insights about controlling the viral pandemic.
Why Japanese Businesses Are So Good at Surviving Crises
The Soft Butch That Couldn’t (Or: I Got COVID-19 in March and Never Got Better)
Governments must beware the lure of free money Budget constraints have gone missing. That presents both danger and opportunity ...... It is sometimes said that governments wasted the global financial crisis of 2007-09 by failing to rethink economic policy after the dust settled. Nobody will say the same about the covid-19 pandemic. It has led to a desperate scramble to enact policies that only a few months ago were either unimaginable or heretical. A profound shift is now taking place in economics as a result, of the sort that happens only once in a generation. Much as in the 1970s when clubby Keynesianism gave way to Milton Friedman’s austere monetarism, and in the 1990s when central banks were given their independence, so the pandemic marks the start of a new era. Its overriding preoccupation will be exploiting the opportunities and containing the enormous risks that stem from a supersized level of state intervention in the economy and financial markets. ........... The imf predicts that rich countries will borrow 17% of their combined gdp this year to fund $4.2trn in spending and tax cuts designed to keep the economy going. They are not done. In America Congress is debating another spending package ........... central banks are tacitly financing the stimulus. The result is that long-term interest rates stay low even while public-debt issuance soars. ...... The state’s growing role as capital-allocator-in-chief is the third aspect of the new age. ......... Together the Fed and Treasury are now backstopping 11% of America’s entire stock of business debt. .......... Low inflation is therefore the fundamental reason not to worry about public debt, which, thanks to accommodative monetary policy, now costs so little to service that it looks like free money. ........ deficits and money-printing may well become the standard tools of policymaking for decades. The central banks’ growing role in financial markets, meanwhile, reflects the stagnation of banks as intermediaries and the prominence of innovative and risk-hungry shadow banks and capital markets .......... In the old days, when commercial banks ruled the roost, central banks acted as lenders of last resort to them. Now central banks increasingly have to get their hands dirty on Wall Street and elsewhere by acting as mammoth “marketmakers of last resort”. ............. If inflation jumps unexpectedly the entire edifice of debt will shake, as central banks have to raise their policy rates and in turn pay out vast sums of interest on the new reserves that they have created to buy bonds. And even if inflation stays low, the new machinery is vulnerable to capture by lobbyists, unions and cronies. ............. When money is free, why not rescue companies, protect obsolete jobs and save investors? However, though that would provide a brief stimulus, it is a recipe for distorted markets, moral hazard and low growth. ............. today interest rates, so close to zero, seem impotent and the monarchs who run the world’s central banks are becoming rather like servants working as the government’s debt-management arm.
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