'USA: Passing the buck': Cuomo, Trump exchange barbs over coronavirus testing

The governors of Michigan, Florida and other states outlined tentative steps on Friday to reopen their economies, a day after President Donald Trump unveiled guidelines for a phased lifting of restrictions for stopping the coronavirus pandemic. But New York's governor said that it was vital for testing to be ramped up before any discussion of reopening the economy could occur.

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https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-coronavirus-friday-1.5535967

Capitalism’s triple crisis - by Mariana Mazzucato

After the 2008 financial crisis, we learned the hard way what happens when governments flood the economy with unconditional liquidity.

Capitalism is facing at least three major crises. A pandemic-induced health crisis has rapidly ignited an economic crisis with yet unknown consequences for financial stability, and all of this is playing out against the backdrop of a climate crisis that cannot be addressed by ‘business as usual’. Until just two months ago, the news media were full of frightening images of overwhelmed firefighters, not overwhelmed health-care providers.

This triple crisis has revealed several problems with how we do capitalism, all of which must be solved at the same time that we address the immediate health emergency. Otherwise, we will simply be solving problems in one place while creating new ones elsewhere. That is what happened with the 2008 financial crisis. Policy-makers flooded the world with liquidity without directing it toward good investment opportunities. As a result, the money ended up back in a financial sector that was (and remains) unfit for purpose.

The Covid-19 crisis is exposing still more flaws in our economic structures, not least the increasing precarity of work, owing to the rise of the gig economy and a decades-long deterioration of workers’ bargaining power. Telecommuting simply is not an option for most workers and, although governments are extending some assistance to workers with regular contracts, the self-employed may find themselves left high and dry.

The bad news is that the Covid-19 crisis is exacerbating all these problems. The good news is that we can use the current state of emergency to start building a more inclusive and sustainable economy. The point is not to delay or block government support, but to structure it properly. We must avoid the mistakes of the post-2008 era, when bailouts allowed corporations to reap even higher profits once the crisis was over but failed to lay the foundation for a robust and inclusive recovery.

This time, rescue measures absolutely must come with conditions attached. Now that the state is back to playing a leading role, it must be cast as the hero rather than as a naive patsy. That means delivering immediate solutions, but designing them in such a way as to serve the public interest over the long term.

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https://www.socialeurope.eu/capitalisms-triple-crisis

EU: Only when it is in peril is the idea of Europe so inspiring - by Fintan O’Toole

Most ideas prove themselves by working well. The idea of Europe, on the other hand, seems to be most powerful when it’s going disastrously wrong. Over the course of modern history, it appears that Europe becomes an urgent business only when it is threatened with disintegration.

When things are OK, Europe bores us to tears. It is 28 shades of grey. But plunge Europe into existential crisis and it suddenly seems to matter. This is the great paradox of the idea: it grips the imagination only when it is in a dire state. The odd way in which the threat of Brexit makes the notion of Europe interesting again is actually quite familiar.

Europe has always drawn energy from the proximity of catastrophe. The first modern conception of Europe – that of a Christian commonwealth of holy kingdoms – took hold because the Turks were at the gates of Vienna and the triumph of Islam in Europe seemed a real possibility.

The religious wars in which Catholic and Protestant powers tore each other apart were ended by appealing to that same idea of European Later, the Enlightenment conceptions of a European culture based on science, reason and human rights became most vividly urgent when it collapsed face down in the mud of Flanders.

And the European Union emerged from the ultimate degradation of the European Enlightenment ideal at Auschwitz. Threaten or destroy the idea of Europe and it becomes suddenly potent. Take it for granted and it atrophies.

In its 58 years, the EU has worked best when it has been, in the broadest sense, negative. It has stopped things happening. It stopped Germany destroying itself, and Europe, yet again. It stopped central and eastern Europe from descending into chaos after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It did not stop the horrendous civil wars in Yugoslavia, but it has offered a way out of them for Slovenia and Croatia and at least a roadmap for Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia.

It also – and this is not acknowledged often enough – allowed Europe to escape at least some of its own most vicious hypocrisies. At the heart of the idea of Europe were notions of superiority – of Christianity over Islam and of scientific rationalism over the benighted superstitions of lesser peoples. This superiority manifested itself in the barbarism of empires. “European”, to much of the world, meant a rapacious white man with a gun.

Maybe the British referendum will be the moment at which the EU begins to reconnect with its roots in the positive side of fear. Not a Project Fear of warning the Brits how harsh their lives will be outside an imaginary European Garden of Eden, but the energising fear that the world can be a pretty bad place if we don’t work in common to make it more equal, more democratic and more sustainable.

Read more: Only when it is in peril is the idea of Europe so inspiring | Fintan O’Toole | Opinion | The Guardian