A new report warns that "the world entered an age of overlapping emergencies"and indicates the need for a new stabilization approach involving a buffer systemto mitigate price volatility in essential commodities to promote economic stability and growth.
"The neoliberal stabilization paradigm of interest rate hikes and austerity left economies around the world unprepared for the shocks to essentials experienced in the overlapping emergencies of war, conflict, climate change, and pandemic," the lead author, Isabella Weber, of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, wrote in the report.
"We argue that in an age of overlapping emergencies, such a new paradigm requires a refocusing on stabilization policies for essential sectors that have the potential to unleash systemic instabilities when hit by shocks," she wrote, adding, "We revisit the classic case for public buffer stock systems."
She noted, "Price volatility in essential commodities can lead to sellers' inflationbecause of the interaction with administered prices in the industrial sector and can hamper growth and development prospects."
Separately, Bloomberg reported that Norway has initiated a plan to increase its domestic grain stockpiles.
"This is about being prepared for the unthinkable," Finance Minister Trygve Slagsvold Vedum said last week.
1 comment:
When communists take over immediately you have food shortages. The peasants end up eating fried tree bark cooked in insect bolognese sauce.
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