24 November
Prof. Steve Keen, an applied economist at the John Hopkins University, re-tweeted his views on how tackling private debt can aid in providing greater Covid-19 resilience.
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In his view, the impact of private debt on livelihoods and jobs has been ignored far too long by mainstream economists, one of the reasons why the US walked blindfolded into the financial crisis in 2008.
According to Keen, private debt and unemployment have a staggering correlation that somewhat resembles a Rorschach Blot on a graph. He states that when credit goes up, unemployment goes down and vice versa.
The global pandemic has had a massive blow on people’s jobs and security across the globe.
While the US hit a record high of 192,000 Covid cases in a day recently, tens and millions of Americans are at a risk of losing their unemployment benefits in the upcoming month with the expiration of Cares Act provisions.
Meanwhile, while UK’s chancellor, Rishi Sunak believes that Covid-19 posed a greater threat to the economy than a no-deal Brexit scenario, a London School of Economics analysis has earlier predicted that the long-term economic effects of a no-deal Brexit could be two or three times greater than the pandemic-induced scarring over the long term.
