Economics

How Coronavirus Has Upended Economics in Just a Few Weeks

  • Big tilt toward government spending will be tough to unwind
  • In the post-virus world, MMT and debt monetisation loom large
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

In the heat of a global crisis more sudden and severe than anything in living memory, economic orthodoxies are getting tossed aside at a furious pace. Some of them may be gone for good.

Public debt, for example, has often been seen as a drag on economies -- but right now it’s their lifeline. The coronavirus has shut down swaths of private business. In the U.S. alone, it threw about 3 million people out of work in just a week.