Prologue

Friday, May 1, 2024 – How to stand out in a crowd? Consider idiosyncrasy, a peculiar behaviour or attitude that marks the slightly unusual personality of the odd one out. This need not involve appeals to the outrageous as a mechanism to generate attention.

The strategy was successfully deployed over a period of about six years in the 2010s to elevate the profile and profitability of Capital Finance International, a magazine-like British quarterly journal that sought to unearth and recognise corporate excellence.

Notwithstanding its almost impossible charge, the journal experienced a brief flourishing before succumbing to the mismanagement and greed of its rather hapless owners. Now sadly defunct, CFI got stuck in a swamp of its own making, and eventually drowned, but not after a valiant attempt to survive the Corona Pandemic.

Recognising the need for pro-active reporting on a crisis of a magnitude that overshadowed all prior economic calamities in living memory, CFI editor Wim Romeijn decided to begin filing daily reports on the fallout of the pandemic. He recognised the true scale of the emergency early on after noticing how several governments swiftly unleashed their full financial might to combat the virus.

“All of a sudden ministers of Finance known and celebrated for their impeccable frugality appeared on the telly to tell the citizenry that money was no object. This was completely out of character and, as such, an indication of a state of near-total panic that gripped authorities in Europe, North America, and elsewhere. Here was a virus that, almost instantly, caused cherished policy truths to be ditched quite unceremoniously, sparked a reevaluation of previously unquestioned economic values, and uncovered dimensions of state sovereignty that had remained hidden for decades.”

In 2020, push came to shove. As it did so, a scenario unfolded, fascinating and fearsome in equal measure, that realigned global priorities, upset geopolitical apple carts, and – perhaps most important of all – showed the glaring inadequacy of big business in dealing with a crisis that affected all of society. The pandemic was such a crisis.

Clueless as they may have been initially, governments soon seized the initiative and made the best of an almost impossible situation. Often vilified for their meddling, inconsistency, and inability to act sensibly, most governments turned out to be saviours of last resort.

Not without a measure of schadenfreude, Mr Romeijn reminded his audience of the phrase that helped propel Ronald Reagan to the presidency of the United States: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” To great applause from chief executives, entrepreneurs, and assorted conservatives alike, Mr Reagan called these words the “most terrifying” of the English language. Yet in 2020, those same people clamoured in unison for state support in a re-run of the old bankers’ adage that outsized profits need to remain privatised whilst catastrophic losses must be socialised.

The author uses elements of history, philosophy, and political and economic thought to paint an exceptionally vivid picture of the unequalled societal upheaval caused by the pandemic. Now, barely four years later, most lessons of that episode have already been forgotten.

It’s back to business-as-usual as if nothing ever happened. It would appear that a collective urge to ‘live and forget’ has prevailed. This is both understandable and worrisome. Echoes of the pandemic still reverberate through the halls of power in Europe, North America, and Asia.

Mr Romeijn is a forty-year veteran of reporting on macro-economic trends. He has worked for several publications in the UK, Canada, and The Netherlands.

He is the author of The Road to Hell: Existential Threats and Mass Delusion, published by Van Heesch Press. He is currently working on a compendium of remarkable letters that seek to tell truth to power. A vast selection of his work is available at CFI Press.