doom loop

Britain is caught in a Covid doom loop, the pattern of which is becoming depressingly familiar. A new variant of the virus appears. It spreads rapidly. Restrictions are imposed to slow transmission rates and to take pressure off the NHS, but the economy suffers.

This is the only remedy that would permit an escape from the “doom loop” described by Piergiorgio Alessandri and Andrew Haldane (2009), whereby, when financial institutions are seen as “too big to fail,” governments have no option but to bail them out with public money, no matter how many times they claim they will not do so.