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Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy
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About This Book
This book's great service is that it challenges us to consider the ways in which our institutions and systems, and the assumptions, positions and divisions that undergird them, leave us ill prepared for the next crisis.--Robert Rubin, The New York Times Book Review Deftly weaving finance, politics, business, and the global human experience into one tight narrative, a tour-de-force account of 2020, the year that changed everything--from the acclaimed author of Crashed. The shocks of 2020 have been great and small, disrupting the world economy, international relations and the daily lives of virtually everyone on the planet. Never before has the entire world economy contracted by 20 percent in a matter of weeks nor in the historic record of modern capitalism has there been a moment in which 95 percent of the world's economies were suffering all at the same time. Across the world hundreds of millions have lost their jobs. And over it all looms the specter of pandemic, and death. Adam Tooze, whose last book was universally lauded for guiding us coherently through the chaos of the 2008 crash, now brings his bravura analytical and narrative skills to a panoramic and synthetic overview of our current crisis. By focusing on finance and business, he sets the pandemic story in a frame that casts a sobering new light on how unprepared the world was to fight the crisis, and how deep the ruptures in our way of living and doing business are. The virus has attacked the economy with as much ferocity as it has our health, and there is no vaccine arriving to address that. Tooze's special gift is to show how social organization, political interests, and economic policy interact with devastating human consequences, from your local hospital to the World Bank. He moves fluidly from the impact of currency fluctuations to the decimation of institutions--such as health-care systems, schools, and social services--in the name of efficiency. He starkly analyzes what happened when the pandemic collided with domestic politics (China's party conferences; the American elections), what the unintended consequences of the vaccine race might be, and the role climate change played in the pandemic. Finally, he proves how no unilateral declaration of 'independence or isolation can extricate any modern country from the global web of travel, goods, services, and finance.
Reviews
"I expected to find it uncomfortably positioned between two stools: stale as journalism but premature as history."
"While some readers may wonder whether the full impact of 2020 can be understood halfway into 2021, Tooze's sense of urgency in the face of historic upheavals is a compelling argument for the world to prepare for momentous change."
"Tooze synthesises a huge volume of information to argue that we must prepare for a new wave of crises or risk being sunk by them."
"That, naturally, applies much less to China, where the People's Liberation Army is always available, in the last resort, to enforce the diktats of the central committee of the Communist Party."
"It's a complex story, which Tooze tells with clarity and verve."
"does gloss over the dangerous underside of Beijing's authoritarian regime."
"A comprehensive history of an unprecedented year, Tooze's account describes how the pandemic played out politically across the globe, the interplay between climate change and the pandemic, and the myriad effects of the world economy nearly shutting down in a brief period that, as Tooze puts it, made 'History with a capital 'H.'' Readers will find this deeply informed parsing of the pandemic to be illuminating and thought-provoking."
"Tooze briskly and expertly recounts the tense weeks in March 2020 when the Fed shored up the Treasury market with collateralized short-term loans, dropped interest rates to zero and announced backstops for commercial paper — promissory notes that companies issue to fund short-term obligations ..."
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