“It’s very easy for us to forget that things in the global economy and geopolitically were already somewhat precarious before COVID hit in earnest,” says Dr. Dambisa Moyo. “As we start to think about what a post-pandemic recovery looks like, I think it’s very important to have that context in mind.” This is why, for Dr. Moyo, “COVID is an accelerator to the challenged environment that was already occurring.”
Dr. Moyo is a widely acclaimed economist and author of four New York Times bestselling books, most recently, “Edge of Chaos: Why Democracy Is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth—and How to Fix It,” published in 2018. Her upcoming book, “How Boards Work—and How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World,” is scheduled to be published in the spring of 2021. She spoke with WPR editor-in-chief Judah Grunstein about the challenges facing the developed economies, and how the pandemic will affect them and the global economy more broadly.
Among the “five things that were happening before COVID that were materially worrisome,” she points to “low, slow and even no growth in many large economies, both developed and developing.” The difficulty that democracies, in particular, have encountered in delivering economic growth, combined with increased income inequality, helped drive the backlash against free trade and the rise of nationalism seen across the West in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.