Although the worries of rising prices are more common today than they were a year ago, the main sources of my hyperinflation concerns for 2020 (panic buying, shortages and large-scale supply-chain damage) have not happened.
The difficult reality of last year brought some positive surprises. One of them was how adaptive we turned out to be. The governments, businesses and people brought superhuman efforts in holding back this disastrous tide. The technology of today played inestimable role. The creation and the rollout of the vaccine in such a fast pace should be considered one of the greatest achievements of humanity.
Although many politicians and business leaders demonstrated they don’t deserve their roles, the institutions mostly held up. Many governments provided fiscal stimulus in special relief programs. Few governments even managed to shield their societies from COVID-19 extremely well (New Zealand COVID-19 situation)
The central banks supplemented enormous amounts of liquidity and employed unprecedented mechanisms to bring back economic confidence. I don’t want to think where we would be if in the middle of the crisis banks had to ask companies to pay their debts sooner.
Yes, there are cracks in the dam. We see drastically rising unemployment. Many businesses that closed because of COVID-19 will never reopen. While the new mutations of the virus multiply, the organization of vaccine distribution and the overflow of vaccine misinformation on social media, on top of regular ignorance of precautions, are real threats. There is growing social unrest and the lock-downs become harder and harder to execute.
This spring brings hope like no spring before. If we make it, we should always remember it was narrow and we were extremely lucky.
