How’s Europe going to handle the mother of all crisis? The combo Great Depression, 70s Stagflation and 08 subprime?

First on the virus front. Italy should have been our only Wuhan. After it escalated there, why were we thinking it won’t get everywhere else? We applied the same rule-book we did when fighting terrorism.

This virus will NOT change our way of life! Borders will remain open. Carnivals can go on, we’re not Italians or Chinese after all. Just avoid Asian restaurants and will be fine. Or just sign that you haven’t traveled to Korea.

The fact that we even asked the question economy vs human life was disastrous for both economy and human life. The private sector must have pressured governments to keep the economy open because of the looming recession. Bad move.

Could we have locked only Italy and contain it within its boarders? Imagine how unpopular anti-EU this would have been if EU mandated such anti-Italian move. Imagine what the headlines would have looked like. “EU/Germany wants to turn Italy into Wuhan”

So we all took it for the team. Solidarity and we have 5-6 Wuhans. Now that Germany is handling this so competently, the jealousy in the south is understandable. However Germany is helping big time, but it unfairly has a perception problem that it doesn’t.

This narrative is driven by the exact same folks in Italy who were saying this is just the flu, hugging and kissing in defiance. Fortunately all are on camera, and politically they’re done. (Silver-lining?)

At the beginning of this I thought Brexit in hindsight would have been great if they handled this like they could have. But no. So the anti-EU and anti Germany propaganda has to evolve on the solidarity front and coronabonds.

Going into this crisis Germany was decreasing the public debt to now 60%. Very unpopular move (within and outside) given the negative interest rates. Imagine the German government was being payed to spend and still decided to reduce public debt.

This was against the wishes of ECB, south Europe and US. Imagine if Germany had huge debt going into this. At least one country has the buffer to absorb this massive shock.

And now of course there will be a huge fiscal stimulus by Germany to the rescue of its economy first and with that the rest of Europe. There will be help.

Europe has a number of advantages to come out stronger out of this. First of all we have no oil industry to bailout. Also the health system is so much better even in Italy and Spain. After all they have the top longevity in the world.

The 20k deaths in Italy are 1-2 decades older than the same deaths in US. This is a huge difference.

The privilege to reach age beyond 80 is something even top German healthcare doesn’t buy you. So dear Italians and Spaniards, you still have the best health and that’s worth more than money. Even after discounting this tragedy.

The EU’s response is positioning the rescue package to be the Green New Deal. Big silver lining is that we’ve reached peak coal in 2019. Imagine justifying investment in coal when oil is so cheap.

Why invest in renewables when oil is this cheap then? First we can and must create a ton of jobs in a sector that Europe has competitive advantage. We’ve been losing this competitive advantage to China, now is better than ever to get it back.

We should let some industries die or trim like they should in a capitalist society in order to create the industries of the future. US has decided to save them all, but if we save them all, we end up saving nobody, because we’ll debase the currency ($€£¥) beyond repair.

Big investment in tech startups is already announced.

Let’s not have a good crisis go to waste. If we focus on North-South divide and the coronabonds we will waste it. Let’s focus on the Green New Deal and tech revival in Europe.

@threadreaderapp unroll