Macroeconomic stimulus packages and inequality in developing countries: lessons from the 2007-2009 crisis for South Africa

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread relentlessly across the planet and has disrupted economic activities wherever it has spread. Rarely do health crises of this global magnitude result in such extreme macroeconomic destabilisation and devastation. Health and economic systems have been ill-prepared to counter the calamities of a pandemic of this scale. While lockdowns have been a chief instrument to protect weakened health systems from being overwhelmed by the pandemic, this immediate benefit pales against the escalating macroeconomic costs of this health crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic threatens to turn the global economic downturn into an extended Twenty-first Century Acute Depression.