Covid-19

225 years ago today. The first ever vaccination – against smallpox, the great killer of the time

The pandemic has reminded us of the critical role played by vaccination in our lives. Its impact began 225 years ago today with Dr Edward Jenner’s discovery of smallpox vaccination. It literally changed the world.  And today, we have a new opportunity to reshape our world.  Please click here to download a more detailed PDF

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Covid fears risk a Great Depression and major social unrest

Governments spent most of February/March ignoring my warnings here on the dangers posed by the Covid pandemic. Now many are moving in the opposite direction. Unintentionally, they are helping to create fear and panic, which could well lead to another Great Depression and major social unrest. HOW DID WE GET HERE? I began warning of

Oil prices signal potential end to the V-shaped recovery myth

Oil prices have moved into another ‘flag shape’ – which previously provided critical warning of the March collapse, and of those in 2014 and 2008. The shape is important as it means the bulls and bears have been battling each other to exhaustion, making it likely one or the other will give up. This time,

Economic risks rise as the lockdowns end

It is now 13 years since I wrote the first post here, in June 2007. A lot has happened since then: There was the 2008 subprime crisis, forecast here and in the Financial Times – although sadly, few took advantage of the warning This led to the publication of ‘Boom, Gloom and the New Normal: How

World moves from Denial to Anger, as the Paradigm of Loss moves forward

I have been warning about the Covid-19 risk since early February, and in April suggested here that: “None of us have ever seen a health crisis on the scale of Covid-19 . Nor have we seen an economic crisis on this scale before. The best guide to what may happen is therefore likely to be

World risks moving from Denial into Anger as the Paradigm of Loss moves forward

The head of the IMF has warned again on the likely scale of the economic depression ahead: “Global growth will turn sharply negative in 2020. In fact, we anticipate the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression.” None of us have ever seen a health crisis on the scale of Covid-19 . Nor have we

A new recession era to emerge

Contingency planning has become mission-critical. The longer the coronavirus pandemic continues, the more it will expose the underlying fragility of today’s debt-laden global economy. Companies therefore have to move into crisis management mode, with a number of key areas requiring immediate attention: • Employee health and safety is the top priority. Governments are slowly waking

China’s lockdown makes global debt crisis now almost certain

Beijing has a population of 21.5 million, but you wouldn’t know it from this BBC video from last Thursday.  Normally busy streets and transport systems are eerily empty, with food deliveries often the main traffic on the roads. It’s the same picture in industry, with the Baidu Migration Index reporting only 26% of migrant workers

The blog’s 14th birthday – and the New Normal world it predicted has arrived

The blog has now been running for 14 years since the first post was written from Thailand at the end of June 2007.  And quite a lot has happened since then: There was the 2008 financial crisis, one of the blog’s early forecasting successes This led to the publication of ‘Boom, Gloom and the New

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