2021 is a key year for the reformatting of the world: the transition from a market economy to an information economy, from exchanging goods for money to exchanging personal attention for emotions, from the world of stock exchanges to the world of social platforms.
Last year, on a global scale, the implementation of the task formulated by the Nobel laureate in economics (one of the few who is not ashamed of) Paul Krugman began: to achieve the scale of destruction (necessary, according to Schumpeter, to "clear space" for the imminent transformations) characteristic of the world war , by non-military methods.
The coronavirus has become a long-awaited occasion, and the coronavirus has become an effective tool.
The main trend currently being implemented is that money is giving up its social significance to technologies, primarily infrastructure, and social engineering of all kinds.
The world of speculation is being replaced by the world of rents: technological, infrastructural - and above all, rent derived by the new public infrastructure - social platforms - from the activity of users.
This rent is caused both by direct control of the latter (control over the information they receive - and therefore, their thoughts and feelings), and by training competing artificial intelligence based on digital user traces: the higher the volume and variety of these tracks, the more powerful the artificial intelligence.
Under these conditions, a person loses importance after money: most people become “superfluous” as a labor force, work as such turns into a privilege, and the sovereignty of the individual is eroded by tough and diverse emotional storms.
At the same time, a personality immersed by the marketing algorithms of social networks to keep its attention in the “cocoon of comfort” is not only atomized, but also loses incentives for development, starting to degrade.
Against the background of these grandiose changes, the sharpest fluctuations in the market situation are calming rather than disturbing, returning them to the circle of familiar and therefore pacifying concerns (like President V.V. Putin's anxiety about rising prices soothed Russians who are experiencing all the fears of coronavirus amid the ongoing optimization of healthcare).
Vaccination of the population of developed countries in 2021 will undoubtedly weaken the spread of the coronavirus, and hence the fear of it, although the third, spring wave, superimposed on ongoing mutations, will have time to cause significant damage to the global economy.
Therefore, it is too late to talk about its restoration: the disintegration of global markets into macroregions, begun by Obama (who tried to knock the BRICS countries out of civilization by the Trans-Pacific and Transatlantic partnerships), will become recognized as a dominant trend.
However, in 2021, this trend has not yet materialized: despite the weakening and partial destruction of information, financial and material ties, the world as a whole will still maintain unity.
Macro-regions, into which global markets will disintegrate, will be designated and will separate, but will not separate from each other.
The pumping of the American economy with the emission of dollars, necessary for its existence in the context of the contraction in demand, characteristic of the global depression, will support the oil price and stock market quotes.
While a painful and deep correction of the latter (along with a weakening dollar) is inevitable, the financial architecture of the global economy in 2021 will still persist.
The US struggle to destroy China as a world leader (outstripping them in all spheres except military) and undermine Western Europe as a competitor in commodity markets will continue, but will focus on Russia, refusing to denazify Ukraine, which has turned itself into its "strategic rear".
In this regard, an increase in the intensity of cyber attacks to the level of a cyber storm, or even a full-fledged cyber war, is possible.
The main expected event is the transfer of power in Germany to an anti-industrial coalition led by the Greens, which is solving the problem of de-industrializing their country in the interests of the United States.
To do this, it will be necessary to abandon cheap pipeline energy resources from Russia in favor of expensive Russian LNG, which is bought by American corporations.
A probable instrument of such a refusal is the “color revolution” in Belarus with “unknown snipers” followed (not in 2021) with the establishment of an iron curtain from the Baltic to the Black Sea, blocking the bulk of land communications.
Sino-European communications, weakening, will pass through Turkey, giving it strength for the Great Turan project that directly threatens Russia and strengthening Britain, which is influencing Turkey.
The growing importance of Turkey will become an additional factor in the weakening of Germany and the strengthening of the tendency for the European Union to become a “Euro-caliphate”.
At the same time, they will not be sufficient for the recovery of the European economy, and the growth of the Chinese economy will be insufficient for its harmonious development.
Therefore, internal tension in China will grow.
The Russian economy will continue to move by inertia within the framework of the liberal socio-economic paradigm.
A recovery in oil prices, infrastructure projects and moderate social support could allow our country to increase its share in the global economy amid the destruction of its periphery.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.