The lockdown has accelerated the onset of the financial crisis. Global rescue programs are opening the door to a creeping nationalization. We now face the threat of the kinds of restrictions found in former planned economies.
The coronavirus crisis has exposed once again the fragility of our debt-based economic system. There are alternatives to this artificial system of the last 70 years. There are ways that we can better incentivize saving, which will create not only more productivity but more robustness.
We could be facing the biggest economic crisis of all time. Will politicians be able to learn the lessons from this and use the crisis as an opportunity for a new beginning in economic and public health policy?
At first it seemed as if the new President of the European Central Bank (ECB) Christine Lagarde would simply continue the loose monetary policy of her predecessor. But now she has announced a green policy shift. This marks the beginning of a whole new act in the euro drama.
Capitalism and free markets are widely considered to be incompatible with Christian social ethics. At a closer look, however, market capitalism turns out to be the economic order most consistent with the basic principles of Christian ethics.
The euro has been a political project since its inception. That is why the independence of the European Central Bank was also in danger from the outset. In the end, it always came down to the alternative “Cambridge or Vienna” or, rather, “Keynes or Hayek.” The option for Keynes led to an increasing politicization of monetary policy in the European Monetary Union.
