Anatomy of a Pandemic
6th September 2021
In this first economic history of the 2020 COVID crisis, Columbia University historian Adam Tooze identifies some harbingers of the new world we have entered. Venerable retail stores went bust: Neiman–Marcus, J.Crew, Brooks Brothers. Kurzarbeit, the widely imitated German system of “smart” unemployment benefits in which government tops up income to keep people working, was extended to prostitutes. While big airlines withered, turning airports into empty Ozymandian mausoleums, travel on private jets continued almost uninterrupted.