Ecuador’s election wasn’t free — and its people will pay the price under President Noboa

CAPITALISM is in turmoil. Ongoing economic stagnation, alongside the startling failure of the major Western countries to contain the coronavirus pandemic, is producing a crisis of legitimacy and a corresponding sense of panic among the ruling class.
The leading capitalist power, the US, is the worst affected. Although it remains for the time being the world’s largest economy in GDP terms, its quality of life indicators are deteriorating. The poverty rate has reached 15 per cent, the highest it’s been for 50 years. Infrastructure is crumbling.
Large parts of the country are suffering chronic unemployment, a situation that Trump’s trade wars have singularly failed to fix. Covid-19 has taken the lives of a quarter of a million people, with the number increasing by a thousand every day.



