Business values post Covid-19

AS cheap money starts to look expensive, it is time to consider what the speeding pace of capitalism was doing to us pre-Covid-19 and assess the implications for our post-Covid values. Our financial masters were pumping up the stock markets and pouring cash into a system at a rate that encouraged gambling beyond what sensible commercial practice should have allowed. Business is a gamble, anyway. The virus proved that, if there was any doubt about it.

There were plenty of forecasts of a looming pandemic. None of them were about the date, which is what mattered. Business gamble + debt gamble + cash gamble + pandemic gamble were rather more than the market could cope with. When prices are pushed up so much, beware. Governments, too, have limits on their creditworthiness.

Unsustainable spending