#+title: It was the virus that did it - Michael Robert's Blog

- [[https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/03/15/it-was-the-virus-that-did-it/][source]]
- tags :: [[file:../../../.local/share/Trash/files/20200609211447-covid_19.org][covid-19]] [[file:../20200607142247-political_economy.org][political economy]] [[file:../capitalism.org][capitalism]] [[file:../20200623222802-capitalist_crisis.org][capitalist crisis]]

* Notes
- like in 2008, Roberts expects mainstream economists to blame the crisis on
  exogenous factors
- stock markets have plunged as much as 30% in the span of weeks
- economic activity was already slowing leading up to the pandemic
  #+begin_quote
    COVID-19 was the tipping point. One analogy is to imagine a sandpile
    building up to a peak; then grains of sand start to slip off; and then comes
    a certain point with one more sand particle added, the whole sandpile falls
    over. If you are a post-Keynesian you might prefer calling this a ‘Minsky
    moment’, after Hyman Minsky, who argued that capitalism appears to be stable
    until it isn’t, because stability breeds instability. A Marxist would say,
    yes there is instability but that instability turns into an avalanche
    periodically because of the underlying contradictions in the capitalist mode
    of production for profit.
  #+end_quote
- back in 2018, the WHO coined the term "Disease X"
  - they predicted this disease would arise from animals
  - they predicted it would come from a place where economic development drives
    people and wildlife together
- Rob Wallace (author of /Big Farms Make Big Flu/) argues that pandemics are
  caused by our culture
  - a whole host of diseases can be linked to animal cultivation: SARS, Ebola,
    MERS, the Black Death, and now, COVID
- the COVID recession isn't a supply-side or demand-side shock: it's a
  consequence of capitalism's drive for profit
- it starts with supply, not demand
  - demand is downstream of supply
  - "if people cannot work and businesses cannot sell, then incomes drop and
    spending collapses and that produces a ‘demand shock’"
- mainstream economists think the recovery will bounce back like it did in 1987
- global profitability is low
- [[file:../20200623223058-malthus.org][Malthus]] argued that surplus populations could be eradicated by plagues. This,
  he argued (incorrectly) would make the economy more productive
- for a brief period of time unemployment in the US was 50%. This isn't
  comparable to 2008
- Much like the pandemic curve, economists must also "flatten the curve"
  - their approach so far has been to have central banks provide emergency
    liquidity
- Financial crisis is still high risk
  - Looming debt bomb: corporate debt is higher than ever
- The worst is yet to come

* Commentary
Note that this article was written in March, and much of it is still relevant as
of 6/23.

Many of the things referenced in this article are also mentioned in [[file:20200609203608-cosmonaut_mask_off_crisis_and_struggle_in_the_pandemic.org][Mask Off]].

The point of this article is to show that crises of capitalism are not exogenous
to the system, but endogenous (this point is also made in [[file:20200611201816-capital.org][Capital]]).