There really is no such thing as a free lunch. If things are to get better, not worse, a new social contract is not an option, it’s a must have. There are cogent arguments that a Russian invasion and out and out conflict in Ukraine are improbable. Images can speak louder than words: the pictures that changed Boris Johnson’s mind on climate change. Why our comfort zone may not be as comfortable as we thought.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Raghuram Rajan, The End of Free-Lunch Economics
(Project Syndicate, 31 January 2022)
It’s worth listening to Rajan – a great economist with deep policy experience (as governor of the Indian central bank). He argues that fiscal and monetary policymakers have operated as if there are no tradeoffs to their expansionary policy programmes since the global financial crisis, and particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that economic conditions have changed, they may soon have to relearn old lessons the hard way. This is US focused but its conclusions valid everywhere: “When the Fed does raise rates significantly, the government’s cost of servicing the debt from past spending will limit future spending, including on policies to reduce inequality and tackle climate change” (metered paywall – 7-8 min).
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Janet Bush, Forward Thinking on the social contract in a post-pandemic world with Minouche Shafik and Andrew Sheng
(McKinsey, 2 February 2022)
This is a podcast, but you can read the transcript of this conversation with two prominent global thinkers. Simply put: our social contract is broken, which explains why our politics is so divided and so many citizens feel disappointed and frustrated. Sheng insists on a theme dear to the Monthly Barometer: the need to achieve a social contract between us and Mother Nature. The podcast is 23 min – essential listening or read: societies are changing, and we must have a better social contract. As Shafik observes: “We’re certainly at a critical juncture. At those moments, things can get better. They can also get worse”.
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Elena Chernenko, Are We on the Brink of War? An Interview With Dmitri Trenin
(Moscow Carnegie Center, 29 January 2022)
On several occasions, we had the privilege of welcoming Dmitri Trenin to the Summit of Minds. Apart from being an insightful and astute analyst of Russian affairs (focusing on security), his is the voice of reason. Hence the necessity to read his interview in full for a Russian take on the current crisis. The backdrop: Putin knows that his demands cannot be met by the West. All possible scenarios derive from that. The two main ones: (1) Russia abandons its demands and makes the best out of the concessions that it extracts; (2) The rupture with the West is terminal, and Russia pursues a different union, reassembling territories in the post-Soviet space here and there. All in all, a fully-fledged war / intervention in Ukraine is unlikely (free access – 15 min well spent).
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Revealed: The 11 slides that finally convinced Boris Johnson about global warming
(Carbon Brief, 1 February 2022)
Seldom, facts change a person’s mind, but it seems that this scientific briefing did the trick with Boris Johnson who says that he changed his mind about global warming after having read it. The brief is now made public for the first time, following a freedom-of-information (FOI) request by Carbon Brief. The 11 slides that it contains should dispel anybody’s doubt about the gravity of the climate emergency. As we’ve stated so many times, the evidence is incontrovertible. A must read (free access).
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Leon Seltzer, Why Is It So Hard to Get Out of Your Comfort Zone?
(Psychology Today, 26 January 2022)
This article posits that if we feel stuck, we should ask ourselves where we’re stuck. Staying within our comfort zone, that is to say a confined band of safety can trap us in ways that end up making our life more of a struggle than ever. Even if it prevents us from reaching our goals (both in terms of personal achievement and strong relationships), most of us end up succumbing to this allurement: a trap masquerading as the solution that worsens the original problem. The question we should ask ourselves: would we rather lead a life of caution, however self-constricting, or one (not risk-free but not that threatening either) of enthusiasm, novel undertakings, adventure, and discovery? (free access – 7-8 min).
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