The Economist Latin America December 18, 2021

The year was once again dominated by the covid-19 pandemic, as new waves of infection swept across countries. India’s second wave proved far more deadly than the first one in 2020. By May the government was reporting 400,000 cases and 4,000 deaths a day, although the true numbers were much higher. After a shaky start in some places the roll-out of vaccines in the rich world was, by and large, a success, curbing hospitalisations (the Omicron variant may threaten that good work). Distribution of the doses remains uneven: poorer countries have received far fewer. The WHO warned recently that the donation of vaccines to Africa has been “ad hoc”, making it hard to plan inoculation drives. Quantum of solace Lockdowns came to an end, including one lasting 262 days in Melbourne. Many…

IS IT NEARLY over? In 2021 people have been yearning for something like stability. Even those who accepted that they would never get their old lives back hoped for a new normal. Yet as 2022 draws near, it is time to face the world’s predictable unpredictability. The pattern for the rest of the 2020s is not the familiar routine of the pre-covid years, but the turmoil and bewilderment of the pandemic era. The new normal is already here. Remember how the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 began to transform air travel in waves. In the years that followed each fresh plot exposed an unforeseen weakness that required a new rule. First came locked cockpit doors, more armed air marshals and bans on sharp objects. Later, suspicion fell on bottles of…

TWO YEARS into their terms, governments often languish. But any supporters of Boris Johnson who may be tempted to fall back on that excuse for the increasingly feeble grip of his premiership would be guilty of self-delusion. Britain’s prime minister is facing a double crisis. One half of this is the growing sense that he is temperamentally unfit to hold the highest office in the land. The other is the fear that his government will be incapable of bringing about the reforms it has promised—some of which Britain badly needs. The depths of Mr Johnson’s difficulties became clear on December 14th, when 99 Conservative MPs voted against his “Plan B” to deal with the Omicron variant. It was one of the largest-ever rebellions against a Conservative prime minister and it put…

The year was once again dominated by the covid-19 pandemic, as new waves of infection swept across countries. India’s second wave proved far more deadly than the first one in 2020. By May the government was reporting 400,000 cases and 4,000 deaths a day, although the true numbers were much higher. After a shaky start in some places the roll-out of vaccines in the rich world was, by and large, a success, curbing hospitalisations (the Omicron variant may threaten that good work). Distribution of the doses remains uneven: poorer countries have received far fewer. The WHO warned recently that the donation of vaccines to Africa has been “ad hoc”, making it hard to plan inoculation drives. Quantum of solace Lockdowns came to an end, including one lasting 262 days in…

IN CHRISTMAS 1991 the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Mikhail Gorbachev, its last leader, said that, even if the future was uncertain, at least “we have…abandoned the practice of interfering in others’ internal affairs and using troops outside the country.” Thirty years later Russia, the heir to the old Soviet Union, is once again in the business of interfering abroad. In Vladimir Putin, it is run by a man who splenetically regrets the dissolution of the USSR. Mr Putin particularly resents the way two Slavic states, Ukraine and Belarus, slipped from Moscow’s control (see Essay). He has recently reasserted a large degree of influence over Belarus, after its election-rigging despot turned to him for help. And he is massing troops on Ukraine’s border—over 70,000 of them, complete with supply lines, field…

IN THE “Society of the Spectacle”, published in the 1960s, Guy Debord, a leading theorist in a group of provocateurs known as the Situationists, depicts a culture in thrall to mass media where appearance is more important than fact and representation is preferred to reality. It is an unsettling book and not one that finance types would normally reach for. But after a strange year, the idea of the markets as spectacle has an appealing logic. A Debordian might say that their primary role is no longer capital allocation, or even enrichment, but entertainment. How else to make sense of stock prices driven haywire by social-media mobs or celebrities selling shares in shell companies? A reckoning feels due. And as 2021 draws to a close, markets seem nervy. Speculative assets, such…