Articles

We must first overcome, then learn and correct

April 2, 2020

Something was wrong. We have to be honest and admit that many things were not as they should. The oceans were full of plastic, the winter was slowly disappearing, the fires were devouring enormous pieces of the Amazon rainforests one year, the vegetation of Australia in another… Something was not right.

Text by Corneliu Bodea, CEO Adrem

Things weren’t okay in business either. The further you moved away from production, the lower the margins, and enormous amounts of cash were concentrated along with profits in businesses that served industries far from essential needs. While farmers lived on subsidies or were suffocated by credit, fintechs or other no-asset bases invented unicorns. The financial environment seemed to add more value to a product than its producer himself, and so on…

I don’t know, but it seems to me that some things weren’t going so well. We arrogantly moved away from the basic values and found the best explanations behind our gestures.

There are countless conspiracy theories about the emergence of this virus, from science fiction to religious or worthy of super spy thrillers, and I allow myself not to consider any of them, because I don’t think it’s that relevant.

I am also firmly convinced that the situation is serious and that we must fight first of all with this virus and the associated disease. Then let’s think about the economy, because in the situation of getting it out of control we can lose control over the economy and even a political life close to normal. Imagine reaching an infection rate of 50% and an associated death rate of 2-3% of this number in 3-6 months. To what extent, in such a situation, can we still talk about the economy and the world as we know it?

As inhabitants of this universe, I can’t help but think that we are under the weight of laws such as the one related to entropy and I can’t help but make the connection with the fact that the exacerbation of the volume of information (e.g. 90% of the data created in the world was created only 2 years ago) is associated with order and that this is done in accordance with the aforementioned law at a cost. Is the disorder brought by this pandemic related to the payment of this cost!? Maybe, still irrelevant…

At this time, I think it is relevant to do what needs to be done to overcome the health crisis with as few losses as possible and then to focus on the period after it passes. It is obvious that Romania is not caught up in this situation in a privileged position as there are countries with a solid state budget, free of deficits. Of course, there is talk about the fact that the level of state borrowing is well below the European average and this puts us in a good position to borrow, if we have the money. It is as if I would have preferred to be borrowed with a higher percentage, but that money would have been invested in the health system.

The crisis is deeply affecting and hitting the bottom of the economy, being clearly different from the one in 2008. We notice how in Romania already at the time of writing this article we have over 500,000 suspended contracts and in my opinion starting April 1 we will have about 1 million contracts in this situation. The state’s effort to take over the payment of technical unemployment is commendable, as well as other facilities and except for a deficiency in communication (people are not very good at this) and a latency of decisions, so far it seems that we are doing well. The problem remains of the growth curve of cases of illness and its aggressiveness, because I believe that in an aggravating situation (e.g. Italy) we do not have the adequate response capacity.

Now, the crisis will definitely pass, because humanity has been living in contact with these microscopic parasites for many hundreds of years and we have the necessary weapons to win the fight. How it will pass and when is something that will strongly affect what it will leave behind socially and economically.

I believe that this crisis generated by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic will leave us:

More aware of who we are in the universe and even on this earth, less arrogant;
More responsible about our actions and the impact we produce;
Be more informed about the role of the state and its importance;
More demanding of our leaders. More attentive to the capacity and leadership they show;
More respectful of the health system and the education system;
More rigorous in relation to the value system.

The recovery could be long and painful and I am sure that none of us feel personally guilty for this crisis and will be weighed down by the feeling of persecution. One way or another we have to think that no one has ever promised us that we will not have crises to overcome, trials to face. We are facing a struggle and we must first win, then learn and correct. We will prevail and come back stronger and wiser!