Abu-Ghazaleh: the World is Experiencing the Greatest Depression in Human History
Special to TAG-IT News Agency
AMMAN – “We all know that the world has experienced a Great Depression in 1929 which lasted for five years. Yet, I do believe and I have since four years been sounding the alarm, that we will experience the greatest depression ever in 2020. This is happening now,” said, the Arab well-informed economic expert and businessman, HE Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, the founder and chairman of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Global (TAG.Global), in a new episode of his weekly program (The World to Where?) aired on Russia Today (RT).
He recalled his 2017 warning, that the world will witness the worst economic downturn in the history in 2020,
Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh explained that the economic crisis causing the Great Depression has been compounded by the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), which, he affirmed, will remain part of our life for a long time due to the complex nature of this epidemic and its ability to spread widely.
According to experts, Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh said, coronavirus can only be eradicated with the invention of a vaccine, but that will have to pass through several phases of safety testing on people. Once proven successful, all people around the world will have to be vaccinated before the epidemic can be adequately controlled. That may sound impossible, in which case, the virus may stay with us forever, so we need to find measures andsolutions to overcome the economic crisis.
Additionally, Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh called on every country to establish an Emergency Room to confront the economic crisis; with a full-time economic team assigned to deal with the situation.
Concerning the economic crisis of the United States, which is considered the world’s leading economic power, Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh said: We often hear the saying “When the United States sneezes, the whole world catches cold”, adding that the US announced that its gross domestic product (GDP) had fallen by a record of 33% in the Q2 of this year, based on world economic standards. If an economy shows two consecutive quarters of negative growth rates, the country is officially in a depression. This is what the US declared that it is facing the greatest depression in history.
Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh shed light on one of the problematic aspects in dealing with the economic crisis in the US, saying that the powers of the US president are restricted by the US Congress which makes the decisions, therefore, there is a problem in the economic crisis management regarding the decisionmaking process between the President and the Congress.
Furthermore hee added that President Trump keeps accusing China of standing behind every disaster and crisis that takes place in his country, indicating that the US has no clear vision, unlike China, which outlined its vision represented by the ‘Belt and the Road Project’ –based on the former Silk Road Project-- which is practically China’s strategy to dominate the global trade.
Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh also anticipated that the US will face chaos, inflation, unemployment and collapse of enterprises, noting that one of the studies confirms that 40% bankruptcy will result because of the economic downturn, which is equivalent to the total size of the American-Chinese economies together.
Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh concluded that the world leadership is secured by the world’s leading economic power, not the military or the political power, pointing out that the countries that will face this crisis successfully are the countries that can support their foreign trade and reduce their imports.
