Governments must recapture some of the resources that are wasted in this highly financialized, highly unequal, highly concentrated world to fund a genuine Green New Deal. Kozul-Wright joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast. TRANSCRIPT Paul JayHi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast

Governments must recapture some of the resources that are wasted in this highly financialized, highly unequal, highly concentrated world to fund a genuine Green New Deal. Kozul-Wright joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast.

TRANSCRIPT Paul JayHi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast, and please don't forget there is adonate button at the top of the website. And if you're listening on a podcast, it would be niceif you went down to the very bottom or wherever reviews on whatever platform you'relistening on are and leave a review. Of course, if you like what we're doing, it would be nice ifyou left a good review.

So this is the last segment of a series we've been doing on the report titled 'From GlobalPandemic to Prosperity for All: Avoiding Another Lost Decade,' that's produced by the UnitedNations Conference on Trade and Development, and this is its 2020 report. Now joining usfrom Geneva to continue our conversation is the principal author of the report, RichardKozul-Wright. He's the director division of Globalization and Development Strategies atUNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. There's a lot of wordsgoing on here. He's the author of 'Transforming Economies: Making Industrial Policy Workfor Growth, Jobs, and Development.' Thanks for joining me, Richard.Richard Kozul-WrightNice to be back, Paul. We love acronyms in the United Nations. That's part of our problem.Paul JayYeah, I should just stick with the UNCTAD, but I have to explain what UNCTAD is. At anyrate, if you're listening or you're just joining us, it probably would be good to go back andstart from the first part of the series as we work our way through the report. We're now at theend, and we're going to start talking about solutions and the sections titled 'The GreatEscape'; there is a couple of parts to it. But the theme is to embrace bold ideas. So, Richard,start with that. What are the bold ideas presented in the report about what should be doneabout the current crisis?

Just to add a little context, just before this chapter, you ended the previous section with this:

"The economic damages from rigging the rules of the game are not the end of the problem.The concentration of economic power is politically corrosive. National constitutions instructlegislatures to make and enforce the same rules for everyone, whether operating within orwithout a corporation. The response to the global financial crisis suggested otherwise. Bankswere bailed out and austerity-hit jobs, wages, public services, while financial asset holdersmade further gains from the recovery."

So, Richard, when you make the proposals of what should be done, obviously you're saying,well, let's not do that. Because pre-pandemic, as you've argued in the course of ourconversations and as you said in the report, pre-pandemic, the global economy was already;I don't know if you could say the crisis is the problem, but on the verge of one because of agrowing gap in incomes and the enormous growth in inequality. So what should be done?

Richard Kozul-WrightYou know, what we argued was that as a result of this failure to deal properly with theaftermath of the global financial crisis, we had this set of pre-existing conditions that werethere before COVID struck but have been, in many respects, worsened and exaggerated bythe current crisis. This is honestly the obvious one of inequality; as you mentioned, this is theone that people obviously talk about a lot.