In Hong Kong, cryptotrader Sam Bankman-Fried stole naps on his office beanbag to get through 18-hour days as demand surged for digital assets. At an auction in Wellington, Darryl Harper pronounced the New Zealand housing market "ferocious” as he brought the hammer down on homes going for hundreds of thousands of dollars above their official valuations.

In Makati City, the Philippines, AC Energy Corp. Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Corazon Dizon was overwhelmed by the appetite for a $300 million green bond. And in Midtown Manhattan, hedge fund manager David Einhorn marveled over a job application from a 13-year-old who claimed he’d quadrupled his money.

A common thread runs through these scenes from the plague year 2020: Cheap money, gushing in from the world’s major central banks, inflated assets and reshaped how we save, invest and spend. And that’s not the end of it. Unlike past recoveries, when investors had no clarity on when the monetary taps would be tightened, this time officials have explicitly said they’re going to stick to their loose policies well into a post-pandemic recovery.