The year that is ending can be considered a year of recovery after the Covid pandemic, although it must be said, to head towards what is expected to be an atypical year 2023, with inflation, low growth, but paradoxically with job creation, while the geopolitical tension process will intensify. As a consequence of the pandemic; The global economy significantly decreased its dynamics with an impact on the increase in poverty with a considerable setback in the educational levels of millions of young people. Despite the above, the world population knew how to respond consciously, demonstrating solidarity and compassion despite the selfish bias that usually characterizes us. For their part, most governments rose to the occasion.
The coming years should give space to mental health to adequately process this period of uncertainty, confinement, anxiety and stress. In addition to the foregoing, significant efforts by governments will have to be added to speed up wealth distribution processes in order to invest the greatest amount of resources in education and health. All countries will face the same challenges, however, it will be even more important to resize the role of the State in society. In recent decades, particularly after the so-called velvet revolutions, the State has been losing strength at the hands of the market, which has given rise to the pandemic allowing us to realize the abandonment of the health and educational systems.
The year that is ending must be seen as the interregnum between post-pandemic hope and the start of the global economic recovery. It is the year of the calm before the storm. Although in 2022 we experienced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which caused an impressive display of information in the West to discredit the illegal Russian offensive, outside the conflict zone there have been, so far, no major consequences other than the new energy trade agreement in the region of central Europe. What happened, however, opened the door to the possibility of the emergence of similar conflicts that seek nothing more than to prevent cultural advancement, be it from the West or the East, in what can be defined as the emergence of a new political-commercial bloc. that will compete with the US for global leadership in the remainder of this century.
The global tension will be centered on the China-Taiwan, India-Pakistan, North Korea-Japan, Middle East spaces and, of course, the continuation of the invasion of the territory of Ukraine. Thus, as has happened over the centuries, the world follows its natural dynamics, so the only thing we can hope for is that it does so taking into account the lessons that the end of the pandemic has left us and the alerts that this year of transition have shown. In short, it has been a year of transition towards a complex year 2023 that envisions a deep economic recession in Latin America, China and Europe while it will be shallow in the US.
