thanks to @evgenymorozov I am now a Cyberflaneur! Did mine on #WallStreetConsensus - the global political project to ‘escort capital’ to Sustainable Developmental Goals in the Global South.
Think World Bank’s pandemic bonds that actually pay out in a pandemic. https://twitter.com/syllabus_tweets/status/1246389777223598080

WSC = ambitious project to privatise/commodify public infrastructure (health, education, roads, renewable energy) via Public-Private Partnerships. It aims to package PPPs into ‘investable development assets’, preferably in local currency, through:

(1) derisking of PPP infrastructure, paid by Global South and Multilateral development in the form of guarantees and subsidies)
(2) ‘Americanising’ local financial systems to render PPP-based SDG assets investible.

if you think - nice piece of development history, obliterated by the COVID19 pandemic - I worry you are wrong.
My prediction is that COVID19 will turbo charge #WallStreetConsensus

PPP-based SDG asset classes were pushed as strategic necessity for 'fiscally constrained' countries, who could tap into trillions of institutional investors.

COVID190 response preserves those structural conditions:
1. Central banks preserving financial capitalism on their balance sheet.
2. EM countries even more tempted by PPPs' illusion of fiscal effectiveness because they can circumvent budgetary restrictions & spend off-balance

I talked about Wall Street Consensus last year in Tunis, if you can put up with the poor sound, you get jokes about Fidel Castro, World Bank and Germans in one go