Industry interrupted: Cranes are parked outside a closed construction factory in Madrid during a national lock-down to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. — AFP
AS global supply chains break, airlines slash flights, borders rise within nation-states, stock exchanges convulse with fear, and recession looms over economies, from China to Germany, Australia to the United States, we can no longer doubt that we are living through extraordinary times.
What remains in question, however, is our ability to comprehend them while using a vocabulary derived from decades when globalisation seemed a fact of nature, like air and wind. For the coronavirus signals a radical transformation, of the kind that occurs once in a century, shattering previous assumptions.
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