Internationalism No. 33, November 2021 Page 6 Can a good recovery do damage? The answer is: yes, sometimes it can, if it triggers major imbalances. The capitalist mode of production is a source of imbalances, inequalities and asymmetries. This time, the imbalance is largely due to the states which have concocted an unexpectedly strong recovery, pulled along by private consumption, with their stimuli, subsidies, relief, tax cuts and zero-rate credits. According to The Economist , the stimuli handed out by governments during the pandemic amounted to about $10,400 billion in the world, equal to one eighth of the 2020 gross world product in current dollars. According to the April IMF Fiscal Monitor , governments, additional expenditure and lost revenue in the advanced economies were equal to 16% of the sum of their GDPs, in the face of losses which, in the final balance sheets, amounted to 4.5% of it. A good part of this went on governmen...