Much as... so.. structure?

It's a short form of 'in much the same way as' which means 'in a similar manner'.

It doesn't quite mean 'just as' because 'just as' means that the parallel is exact whereas the supposed new era started by the pandemic has started in a different way from the new eras started by the adoption of Friedman's monetarism and bank liberalisation.

You could say that the bank liberalisation era started 'just as' the monetarist era started because they were the result of deliberate policy changes by government driven by political theory and you could, perhaps, say that the era started by the pandemic started 'just as' the era started by the financial crisis of 2008 did because both were ushered in by unplanned events which, though foreseeable in principle, could not have been accurately predicted in terms of their timing.

Don't forget that there is another meaning of the phrase 'just as', which is not the one discussed above. It can also mean 'at the same moment'. For instance "Just as the train set off I realised I had left my briefcase on the platform." You cannot use 'much as' to indicate a less accurate coincidence of timing but you can use it to indicate roughly parallel, rather than exactly parallel, causation.