There is an "economy" defined as a "short-sighted economy" that "has allowed the spread of exploitation and at the same time of the market power of corporations, opening the way to immense inequalities: of income, wealth, opportunities, health". To affirm it, in an interview with Repubblica, is the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz. "In the long run, the flaws in the system in terms of income and opportunity have paved the way for the populism of extremists, in America as in many European countries, a tremendous threat to our democracies. It is as if they have forgotten the investments in "resilience", indispensable to equip societies to withstand violent and repeated shocks such as Covid or war", he says. "In the absence of safety nets, the pandemic has hit hardest, around the world, those with lower incomes and insufficient contractual and welfare protections. When Covid was ending and economies were beginning to recover - recalls the Nobel Prize-winning economist - bottlenecks in the supply chain and disorderly demand, suddenly returned overbearing, led toinflation which, again, penalizes and affects the weakest groups. The invasion of Ukraine has dealt the final blow, highlighting once and for all the weaknesses of a "short-sighted" economy, both because it has shown the inadequacy of investments in resilience, and because, for example, it has failed to correct the mechanisms of energy price formation that have overloaded the increases at source, which as you know are fading, hitting the lowest incomes. Inflation is the strongest vector of inequality," Stiglitz said. "Well, the case of China applies to everyone. Beijing's long-ambivalent attitude, which at times seems to support Russia, has clearly exacerbated the differences and pushed away their solution."
Inflation is a real emergency: "You can attack it in different ways. Meanwhile, it is now mainly caused by the excessive profits that large corporations accumulate at least in some sectors. It must be considered that the pressures on the supply chain, as well as on energy, have eased, and in fact inflation is falling on its behalf. High rates end up exacerbating many problems and making them harder to solve. And they give rise to a series of side effects such as the flight of deposits from American banks in search of better yields now that they are possible, which several bankruptcies have already caused, and then of course the burden on loans of all sorts. Not to mention the effects abroad, namely the aggravation of the debt crisis in many developing countries that ends up once again affecting poor people".