IMF:F&D: Resilience: Healing the Fractures // Fall 2020 Issue Out Now

Dear maria, Two words: we're back.  And we have big news. Our fall 2020 issue, once again produced by a team of teleworkers, was just printed and published. In this edition, we focus on resilience. “As the world seeks to comprehend the new normal, we face many unknowns. Will jobs come back? How will we travel again? What will recovery look like? Much is still a question mark. What we do know is that the age of COVID-19 has painfully exposed and widened existing economic and social divisions and created new ones,” writes editor-in-chief Gita Bhatt. “Yet this crisis and the fault lines it is exposing are inspiring calls for a rethinking of our priorities and reconsidering the very structure of the world economy toward a future that is more equitable, adaptable, and sustainable—more resilient. This issue of F&D gives voice to diverse contributors on what needs to be done.” On that note, we hope you find this curated collection of cutting-edge research, analysis and insight meaningful and action-oriented. In “Knightmare Uncertainty,” IMF First Deputy Managing Director Geoffrey Okamoto writes that in the COVID-19 world, risk has become riskier Oxford University’s Ian Goldin writes that the pandemic is straining economic and social fault lines, and that the only remedy is international cooperation In “The Debt Pandemic” Jeremy Bulow, Carmen Reinhart, Kenneth Rogoff and Christoph Trebesch explain that new tools are needed to handle a coming wave of debt restructuring Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz writes that the pandemic has laid bare deep divisions, but it’s not too late to change course in “Conquering the Great Divide” Barry Eichengreen of UC California, Berkeley, says that the current crisis highlights the urgency of strengthening the global financial architecture In “Overhauling Health Systems,” University of Edinburgh's Genevie Fernandes writes that as countries’ first line of defense against a crisis, health systems need to be strengthened Ulrich Volz of SOAS University London explains that the pandemic is only a prelude to a looming climate crisis in “Investing in a Green Recovery” Addressing systemic racism is a moral imperative, but it can also make economies stronger, writes WEF’s Joseph Losavio in “What Racism Costs Us All” Economists and policymakers also need a wake-up call to root out racial discrimination, writes IMF’s Ratna Sahay and coauthors, who suggest that addressing biases begins at home Also in this issue, how technology can boost either resilience or inequality, why our approach to vaccine finance is ill-suited to addressing epidemic risks by Harvard’s David Bloom, how to deliver debt relief to the poorest by Kevin Watkins of Save the Children UK, and how three people around the world are coping with change as the pandemic upends their world. Our People in Economics series profiles Mariana Mazzucato, tireless proponent of government-led innovation, our In the Trenches series features an interview with Jamaica’s former central bank governor Brian Wynter, and our Picture This visualizes how the viral pandemic is bringing about a new global hunger crisis. Our Back to Basics series explains debt sustainability, and in Currency Notes, we spotlight Tunisia, which honors the country’s first female physician on its 10-dinar banknote. We also review two new books: Angrynomics by Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth, and The Economics of Belonging by Martin Sandbu. Every week for the next few months, we'll dig deeper into each article above and more, collect feedback from experts like yourself, and spark a larger conversation by spotlighting your thoughts in upcoming newsletters. As always, to encourage a global dialogue, this issue will soon be available in español, français, عربي, русский, 中文 and 日本語. Thank you again very much for your interest in F&D. We really appreciate your time. If you have any questions, comments or feedback of any kind on this issue (or the new design of our article pages!), please do write me a note. I would love to hear from you. Take good care, Rahim Kanani Digital Editor, F&D rkanani@IMF.org