A HUMAN STORY
Extraordinary times, extraordinary measures: requiring stimulus packages, recovery packages, crisis packages, take your pick. As a pushy virus gatecrashed almost every sphere of human activity and took hostage much essential economic activity, the scramble to avert a plunge far, far worse than the 2008 crash began.
The nations of the G20 group of the world’s largest economies had by the end of March 2020 already committed to government spending totalling $5 trillion to keep their own financial gears turning. Then along came the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) with an indecent proposal regarding much of the rest of the world. It called for a $2.5-trillion coronavirus crisis package for what it still calls developing countries, broken down thus: $1 trillion as debt cancellation, $1 trillion made available through the use of special drawing rights with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – a kind of ‘liquidity injection’–and a further $500 billion dispersed as grants for immediate health the wealthy nations had met their overseas aid targets.
