Just as past global disasters gave rise to new ways of organizing society and the economy, so must the COVID-19 pandemic. A system built on "optimization" and accumulation for its own sake can no longer be defended in a world of mounting financial debts and rising temperatures.
PARIS – The key to a green recovery after the pandemic is to reform the entire economic and financial system. It is no accident that our current approach to calculating economic activity emerged in the aftermath of the Great Depression. That crisis impelled the adoption of national accounting based on John Maynard Keynes’s insights about aggregate demand, the concept of GDP as a metric for economic progress, and the generally accepted accounting principles that underpin private accounting systems to this day.
PARIS – The key to a green recovery after the pandemic is to reform the entire economic and financial system. It is no accident that our current approach to calculating economic activity emerged in the aftermath of the Great Depression. That crisis impelled the adoption of national accounting based on John Maynard Keynes’s insights about aggregate demand, the concept of GDP as a metric for economic progress, and the generally accepted accounting principles that underpin private accounting systems to this day.