Wall Street Collapses in Biggest One-Day Decline In History: Are Policymakers Destroying the Global Economy In Order To Save Us?
The recession that has followed the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic is only in its initial stages, and the path is already pointed towards an economic contraction that will likely exceed the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 in severity. Historians will look back on this period in puzzlement as to how this happened. For, unlike the credit freeze that occurred in 2007-08 due to subprime mortgages poisoning the global financial system, in 2020 the entire planet has decided to commit economic suicide in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The enforced shutdown of the global economy is presented as the only prescription for containing the outbreak of coronavirus, and the Global Economic Crisis now underway is the equivalent of chemotherapy for a cancer patient; toxic to the body, with many negative side effects, but proclaimed as the only way of saving a patient afflicted with terminal cancer.
Historians will look back on this period and render their own judgment if economic suicide was the proper prescription. Be in no doubt, however. The path chosen by policymakers to combat the COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented development in world economic history; an enforced, purposefully designed economic recession of staggering proportions.
On March 16 the Dow Jones dropped 2,997 points, equivalent to nearly 13 percent of the DJIA value. This follows days of precedent -making daily declines, interspersed with a few days of record gains. This wild ride of volatility is headed in only oneĀ direction, however; massive losses in equities, with central banks and policymakers uncertain as to how to address the massive wave of economic destruction that has been unleashed, hoping that history will judge them righteous for having chosen what they believe is the only sure path towards containing a virus that, though a clear public health threat, was nowhere near as deadly a pandemic as the Black Death of medieval times.
During the Vietnam War, an American army officer explained to a journalist that he had to order the total destruction of a village in order to save it. Hopefully , the massive wave of economic contraction being imposed globally by policymakers will not have a similar outcome.