Mercantilism; which was the ‘Hall of Fame’ from 15th-18th Century had emerged from the decaying of feudal economic system in Europe. It was initially started from the Mediterranean trade in bullion on the cities like Venice, Genoa and Pisa. In the course of history, this idea was challenged by the writings of John Lock’s Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration with larger than life of Adam Smith’s, The Wealth of Nations of 1776—gave rise to Classical Liberalism. This idea also even started shaking during the 1930s followed by the Great Depression. The Keynesian economic model came to escape the consequences of this Great economic shortfall till 1970s. Afterwards, Neo-liberalism was the ‘lifeline of the global economy’. Soon, this also diminished from the rapid financialization and globalization process of 1990s. The financialization, which was the ‘Heart of the Town’ till 2008; devastated by the 2008 financial crisis. The US government rescued this crisis via Dodd-Frank Act and greater stimulus package to economy. And, lastly current COVID-19 pandemic crisis is much more powerful than that of 1930’s Great Depression or any other crisis in observable history. To cope of with this crisis, Biden administration is rescuing the economy with comprehensive stimulus package by challenging the internationally accepted fundamental economic model.
Today, Keynesian economic model is taking shape in the US. The central theme of Keynesian theory —measured as the sum of the spending by households, business, and the government; which Biden is doing so by $640 billion housing plans over 10 years to provide affordable, safe housing for all individuals, by increasing tax for corporations and high-income filers by $3.3 trillion. In addition to this, he is creating massive government spending ($2trillion) on infrastructure for job creation, spending on public goods( health care, education, job, security, child care), and less interested in fiscal deficits and his more critical view on an unregulated market controlled by big corporations. These steps of Biden correlated with that of the Keynesian economic model (the model which remained ‘talk of the town’ from WWII to the 1970s). Following this, new Washington Consensus is born against the low levels of government spending, minimizing fiscal deficits, nonintervention, and deregulation in the market, and liberations of trade and foreign investment. All these ‘values’ are undermined by the current Biden administration.
The world economy is in the same historical place as that of WWII followed by the great depression comparing today of the COVID-19 pandemic. So, whenever there is an unprecedented shock on capitalism; it has always transformed itself within. From the Mercantilism(16th-18th Century), Classical liberalism, Keynesian/ neoliberalism, and financialization–capitalism has survived astonishingly. This new ‘Bidenomics’ will behave as an influential replica in the other parts of the world as the land, labor, capital, and productivity is impacted immensely by the COVID-19 pandemic. This succeeding market intervention by the US government could replicate in other international liberalism followers nations of the world. The era of government-led intervention in the market started.
