The Rational Source of Fragility in the Financial World：On the Global Economic Recession Caused by the Outbreak of COVID-19

Abstract

As an emergency outside the economic system, the COVID-19 epidemic has triggered a global economic recession, which highlights the fragility of the financial world. The reason lies in human rationality and its reverse. Based on the medium view of economic philosophy, this paper not only explores the economic reality, but also leaps out of the economic system itself which looking for the generality behind it through the particularity of the phenomenon. On the whole, the financialization of the economic world embodies the height of human beings controlling the economic order with rational creativity. By concentrating economic power on the financial system, a seemingly orderly economic order with finance as the core is designed, but it also leads to the high dependence of the economic system on rational creation that resulting in fragility. Rational reaction can easily lead to fragile rupture and crisis under the impact of emergencies, as shown in this epidemic. This is due to the ignorance of rationality and the limitation of cognition, which makes emergencies often outside the rational prediction system, and the homogenization of economy is easy to cause the chain reaction of crisis; the “animal spirit” and “prisoners’ dilemma” caused by greed and panic dispel the defense line of rational construction, which is the main force to promote the collapse of economic system. Therefore, the ultimate response to reduce vulnerability is to reduce the excessive dependence on rationality, and cultivate the “anti-fragile” mechanism of the market, which means coexisting with and benefiting from the random and uncertain emergencies. As to the problems revealed by the epidemic, we can solve them from source governance and specific response: On source governance, we need to create an economic environment and development model coexisting with randomness, which can encourage market subjects to keep alert to uncertainty under the behavioral motivation of “seeking benefits and avoiding harm”. Therefore, the market will explore the system leading to market equilibrium finally. On the current specific response, we should build a crisis response model of mutual cooperation. As the globalization has taken shape, the market space that integrates virtual economy and real economy, commodity market and financial market created by financialization in the world has made the crisis spread very fast. And because of the social division of labor is based on the whole world, the global value chain deconstructs the integrity of the country economically. Countries have become a part of the value chain . Only by strengthening cooperation can countries get out of the dilemma together.