Capitalism

By Vasilis Kotsis

It is paradoxical but even though economies were dealt a severe blow during the pandemic, the harm to households as regards bank deposits, stock investments, bonds, and real property is limited.

The 21st century's second decade was marked by numerous disputes concerning previous achievements. After the dramatic reduction of world poverty, the development of movement in several sectors and the rapid evolution of technology, the post-Cold War model began to decline. The recent globalization indicators are already showing a downward trend.

International investor interest in Greece, its banks and several local listed companies has increased to an impressive degree, as Wood & Co's four-day conference showed this week. This was also evident in the five-week rally on the local stock market, which has seen its benchmark jump 35%.

Is the coronavirus the last chance for us to bring about fundamental changes in the world, or will the taming of the pandemic give our apparently expired economic model a new lease of life?

A significant portion of the required financing for the relaunch of the real economy could, and actually should, come from capital markets. The Covid-19 pandemic may prove to be a reason to accelerate taking better advantage of existing capital markets instruments as well as designing new ones.

The COVID-19 pandemic stands to improve familial bonds with so many people in Turkey forced to stay at home, according to a leading psychologist and thinker.

"[The lockdown] is an opportunity to discover the language of the family and familial love," Gündüz Vassaf told the Hürriyet Daily News this week.

The responses to crises come in two phases. First, governments respond in predictable ways, consistent with how they have acted before. But then crises have a longer-lasting power, and that is to shift our thinking about what governments should do. The coronavirus is a totemic case in this respect.

It has tracked our globalizing world, following trade and tourist routes, leaving only distant and disconnected places untouched.

Technological progress has helped it travel faster. Instead of months or years, as pandemics used to take in the 14th century, it now takes only weeks to spread from one corner of the planet to another.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, a stock market index that measures the stock performance of 30 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States, suffered its worst session since 1987 on March 12, plunging 10 percent as emergency measures by central banks failed to douse mounting recession fears due to the coronavirus.

A key irony of our times is this: The United States and Britain have been accused in previous decades of constructing an international order to suit their interests. The postwar Western and global system was governed by the international institutions and organizations they created (from Bretton Woods to NATO).