Ben Qadeer's Blog About Writings

The day will come when we look back at the pictures of spring 2020: on the horsemen of the apocalypse in the intensive care units from Bergamo to Manhattan, on the artificial coma of civilization, on empty city centers, air spaces, and school buildings. As radical as the break may be, the acute phase of the pandemic ends at some point. Then the economic revival will have to begin. Zero hours are approaching. Political and economic certainties lost their validity in a few weeks. The pathogen will be brought under control, the uncertainty will remain with us for the foreseeable future.

Thought through…
Is an economic development in the form of a “U” or at least an “L” beckoning us? The Federal Government wants to spend well over a trillion euros in the economic cushioning of the crisis - relative to the gross domestic product more than any other country. However, Olaf Scholz's bazooka strategy will probably not be enough, and further stimulus packages will have to follow in the second half of the year.

But it will be worse than Germany in other, more fragile regions of the world. Many emerging economies, in particular, are at risk of losing part of the wealth they have gained in recent decades. Even before it hits the top of the wave of infections, its capital markets are already collapsing. Neither their health systems nor their state coffers are able to pass the Corona stress test.

The rise of the emerging markets was a result of global economic networking, which in its previous form probably seems to have come to an end. Welcome to the age of deglobalization! To increase their resilience to upcoming black swans, many corporations in the West will have to rethink their global, highly efficient, but also vulnerable value chains. Protectionism and unilateralism, political pathogens that spread before Covid-19, will do the rest. “Industrial repatriation” is the new catchphrase.