Here at Mediolana HQ, we have been signalling for quite some time that structural changes in the global economy are leading to a new modus operandi – at the very least in the developed world – where recessions, those mysterious phenomena which appear to be looming ever-larger in the forefront financial collective’s consciousness, will become a normalised and, at least within the present economic conceptualisations, inescapable fact on the ground. A world of fonduenomics which is being defined by seemingly insatiable demand for rather finite resources is at best one characterised by price volatility; at worst, it is one where prices for commodities which are the lifeblood of what we conventionally understand as the global economy will have to be paid for a little more realistically.
We regret to note that few commentators – perhaps with the partial exceptions of that omniscient Professor of Economics and International Business at the Stern School of Business, NYU, Nouriel Roubini; the extraordinarily prescient financial analyst Max Keiser; and Warner-in-Chief Alessio Rastani – have begun to grasp the implications of this; even what is in many respects an excellent article, Financial crisis has world teetering on the brink: welcome to the new normal (authored by Guardian economics editor Larry Elliott), which at least acknowledges, in the perhaps rather more predictable context of the all-enveloping financial crisis in Europe, that the idea of ‘business as usual’ in the context of the global economy is not really that salient anymore, resists the connection of too many dots.
In the realm of social psychology, theorists have posited that opinions held by a majority can be swayed or even reversed if a minority is persuasive and consistent enough in their viewpoints, while being perceived as flexible and rational, but perhaps philosophy holds the key as to how new, initially jarring economic orthodoxies will someday be seen as natural; as Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) reminds us: ‘All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.’
