Review by Quinn Slobodian (The Guardian)
Wed 11 Oct 2023 10.00 CEST
It has now been 15 years since the outbreak of the global financial crisis, long enough for memoirs and professional accounts to start to appear. The process was kickstarted with the publication of Crashed by Adam Tooze in 2018, a much lauded first draft of history. A friend recounts being interrupted by a series of men in expensive suits while reading it in a coffee shop in Princeton shortly after its publication. They wanted to know whether they were in it – and, if so, how they came off. The people involved have an eye to their legacies.
That may include the three authors of this book, which attempts to apply the lessons of the crisis to current problems. Each has a different perspective. One, Mohamed El-Erian is president of Queens’ College, Cambridge and chief economic adviser at the financial giant Allianz.
Review by Diana Coyle (F Times)
October 4, 2023
In autumn 2008 the economist Mohamed El-Erian, then working at the investment management firm Pimco in the US, rang home to ask his wife to withdraw the maximum daily amount of cash from their account. It had become clear to him, he writes, that the banking system was on the verge of collapse — a valid fear, as was later confirmed.
The great financial crisis of 2008-09 now seems an age ago; the pandemic, the energy shocks that followed Russian’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and stubborn inflation have relegated it to distant memory.
Bloomberg’s Jonathan Ferro sits down with the three renowned authors of ‘Permacrisis’, Former UK PM Gordon Brown, Nobel Laureate Michael Spence, and Mohamed El-Erian of Queens’ College Cambridge. Together the authors plot out a new path for politics and the global economy as it looks to emerge from post-pandemic woes such as low growth, higher inflation, increasing nationalism, climate catastrophes, and poor policy responses. Recognizing their shared values and ideas for a better future, the conversation addresses ways to create a more inclusive and responsive global economy and political infrastructure. Brown, Spence, and El-Erian all contend that a better and more equitable world is possible and look to outline a new path forward.
25 sept 2023 (Bloomberg Television)
The age of permacrisis
13 abr 2021 (updated: 16 abr 2021)
Despite the fatigue with the pandemic and the longing for stability and predictability, Europe has entered the age of ‘permacrisis’, in which volatility, uncertainty, and a prolonged sense of emergency have become the new normal, argue Ricardo Borges de Castro, Fabian Zuleeg and Janis A. Emmanouilidis.
Crisis fatigue has become a widespread sentiment in Europe. There is no immediate end in sight to the COVID-19 pandemic, not to mention the inevitable and fundamental economic challenges that will follow. Internal social and political cohesion, and respect for European values, continue to be under pressure in different corners of the EU, and the geopolitical environment remains in flux.
At the same time, climate change and technological innovation continue to accelerate, pushing our society towards a radically different future.
Many across the EU are longing for stability and predictability – even boredom. But they will be disappointed: rather than being the exception, a state of permacrisis will be the environment in which Europe will have to continue to operate.