The Great Reset raises global hopes — and fears – The Manila Times

Last of 2 parts
In this world in which China’s continuing rise was already perceived as a strategic challenge [to the West], the Covid-19 pandemic was met with further examples of liberal capitalist governance failure. Notwithstanding attempts to preserve Western hegemony and a Western liberal world order, the Covid-19 pandemic will accelerate and intensify existing trends towards a global reset, a shift in the center of economic gravity to Asia, the arrival of a multipolar world and new global development paths.

– Michael Dunford and Bing Qi,
“Global reset: Covid-19, systemic rivalry and the global order”

PART 1 of this article, published last Thursday, ended with the question: Is this global march toward escalating state and multilateral power good or bad?

That very issue is touched on in the above quotation from a recent scientific study on the global rivalry between liberal and authoritarian social systems. With their greater cohesion and centralized control, Asian nations have done better not only in the coronavirus disease 2019, or Covid-19 pandemic, but also in world recessions, both in 2009 and now. That is seen as winning the worldwide ideological struggle between liberalism and authoritarianism.

Besides this seeming global ascendancy of greater state dominance, official clout over societies also looks set to grow with the mammoth global overhang of debt over the state, financial, corporate and household sectors. This IOU mountain could reach as much as 342 percent of world economic output this year — nearly five times the 70 percent debt-to-output ratio deemed prudent for countries.

Hence, massive debt rescues seem inevitable — and with bailouts come tough conditions from lenders of last resort, both governments and multilateral institutions. Indeed, one online rumor going around is a supposed plan by at least one Western government and the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, for borrowers seeking debt relief to turn over all their assets to the state as a condition for bailout.

That same rumor claimed that governments would require citizens to be either vaccinated or forcibly confined in isolation camps, with their properties sequestered by the state. These purported schemes seem farfetched and sure to provoke widespread resistance, especially in Western democracies.

Yet the same thing was thought of by the current draconian lockdown restrictions a year ago. Now, however, not only are people ordered on pain of arrest to wear masks and face shields, stay home for prolonged periods, skip social and religious gatherings, and leave family and friends dying of Covid-19 alone in hospitals. Vast expanses of the economy are shut down as well, throwing hundreds of millions across the planet into joblessness and privation.

‘Reset’: Solution or subjugation?
Rightly or wrongly, global disease, depression and debt are helping justify putting more and more swaths of society under the control of ruling powers, both national and international. Indeed, the global chiefs have openly declared that the pandemic and economic crises offer an unprecedented opportunity to recast all the globe’s institutions, social systems and ways of living.

As cited in Part 1 of this article, the Swiss-based World Economic Forum, or WEF, which groups global state, multilateral and corporate elites, called for “The Great Reset” as early as six months ago, urging, “the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have also chimed in with the same phrase. Writing in Time Magazine, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva also spoke of recasting free enterprise: “I look at capitalism as an economic system that is effective, efficient and rational. However, markets are not perfect. Markets on their own are not going to move us to a low-carbon, climate-resilient path. … another aspect of capitalism that will not fix itself without policy intervention is access to opportunity and inequality.”

The Fund’s sister institution, the World Bank in its Outlook 2050 Strategic Directions: Supporting Countries to Achieve Long-Term Goals of Decarbonization, has also thrown its clout and tens of billions of dollars in resources behind a “bold economic transformation” to achieve environmental targets.

For sure, there is much reason for greater collaboration and common effort in addressing global problems. But Reset opponents see it as a grand scheme for the world’s political and financial elite to recast the world to their agenda.

About a week before the November 3 elections in the United States, a leading anti-Reset voice, Catholic Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, in hiding since he accused Pope Francis of abetting clergy sex abuse in 2018, warned US President Donald Trump:

“A global plan called the Great Reset is under way. Its architect is a global élite that wants to subdue all humanity, imposing coercive measures … the imposition of the vaccination will be accompanied by the requirement of a health passport and a digital ID, with the consequent contact tracing of the population of the entire world. Those who do not accept these measures will be confined in detention camps or placed under house arrest, and all their assets will be confiscated.”

Another Reset criticism appeared in the moderate National Review journal around the time of Vigano’s letter. Its Capital Markets section editor Andrew Stuttaford, hardly an opponent of great wealth, sees in the WEF initiative an advocacy for “corporatism, a hydra-headed ideology [with] a common core: the conviction that society should be organized by and for its principal interest groups — let’s call them ‘stakeholders’ — intermediated by, and ultimately subordinate to, the state. The individual does not get a look in.” (https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/a-useful-pandemic-davos-launches-new-reset-this-time-on-the-back-of-covid/#:~:text=The%20Great%20Reset%20agenda%20would,for%20a%20“stakeholder%20economy.”).

Whether these warnings are warranted, elite control looks set to increase, and six billion souls across the planet shall see if less freedom is worth the promised gains of The Great Reset.

Ric Saludo is president of the Center for Strategy, Enterprise & Intelligence (CenSEI), devising risk management and new normal initiatives. Email: ric.saludo@censei.asia.

*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from The Manila Times can be found here ***