Via S&P comes a nice report: – Overall. We expect GDP growth for Asia-Pacific to fall to 0.3% in 2020 before a gradual recovery, implying a two-year income loss of over US$2 trillion. In 2020, corporates could see on average 10% to 15% less revenue, and banks may incur over US$400 billion in extra credit
Via the excellent Viktor Schvets at Macquarie: Another question that preoccupies investors is whether we are facing a V or W or U-shaped recovery, and the possibility that what has started as an attack on the P&L might morph into a far more deadly and prolonged balance sheet recession. 1. First, regarding the shape of
One of those bellwether indicators for global demand: I have been wondering how the North Asian electronics supply chain has been holding up. A few visits to my local Officeworks has shown shelves cleared of items for a home office build-out. This may have provided some support for the global tech supply chain of which
Via Zoltan Pozsar at Credit Suisse: The Fed’s liquidity injections are working. Global dollar funding conditions have eased, and U.S. dollar Libor-OIS spreads started to tighten. We don’t think that lower prices on the CPFF or the MMLF are necessary for Libor-OIS to tighten more – other factors can tighten it further. First, positive Libor-Libor
Via the IMF: The world has changed dramatically in the three months since our last update of the World Economic Outlook in January. A rare disaster, a coronavirus pandemic, has resulted in a tragically large number of human lives being lost. As countries implement necessary quarantines and social distancing practices to contain the pandemic, the world has been
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the World Health Organisation (WHO) must play a key role in ensuring there is not a repeat of the COVID-19 outbreak. Despite there being strong evidence that the outbreak began in a wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the WHO does not support the closure of wet markets.
When a couple of tweets are worth a thousand words… One of the great benefits of Hyman Minsky’s balance-sheet approach to economics is that it forces analysts to consider how the structure of balance sheets can either dissipate or reinforce underlying conditions, and we may get another lesson in this as the economic impact of…
The United States has threatened to pull its funding from the World Health Organization (WHO), claiming that it has been badly corrupted by China. This view has been backed up by Stanford University’s Lanhee J. Chen: The World Health Organization isn’t just “China centric,” as President Trump called it on Tuesday. It is also broken
Because nobody does global diplomacy like the CCP, via The Spectator: China has tried to restore its image after lying to the world about the seriousness of its coronavirus outbreak, but its attempts at humanitarianism have turned out to be as slippery as its wet markets. After COVID-19 made its way to Italy, decimating the
China is a bit open. Via Capital Economics: Asia is shut: Europe is shut: North America is shut: South America and Africa are next.
It’s the always stimulus that never dies. The Chinese economic recovery is basically toast, via Capital Economics: With people movement still weak and industry stalled, there is one bright spot as usual: Can an economy survive on empty apartments alone? China is going to find out. The world is not supportive of anything else. Asia
The excellent Adrian Blundell-Wignall addressing MB, I think, at the AFR: I have been surprised at just how negative some economists are about COVID-19. Not so much about the near term, where there is general agreement on the severity of the initial rise in unemployment, but rather about what happens on the “other side”. No
Via Capital Economics, the Chinese industrial recovery has stalled at around 80% capacity: Some better measures for the consumer but the industrial recovery has stalled miles below capacity. It may be that those apartment sales numbers are just stimulus anyway. Asia is now shutting down fast: And Europe: Plus the US: It ain’t pretty.
Arguments around whether to implement harsh lock-down measures to curb the coronavirus’ spread typically centre around the trade-off between protecting human life and the economy. New research from MIT suggests that there is no “trade-off” and that stronger lock-down responses typically generate stronger economies: The study, “Pandemics Depress the Economy, Public Health Interventions Do Not:
Via Capital Economics comes China: Europe: Asia: US:
In case you missed it, above is a must watch report from 60 Minutes Australia documenting how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) deliberately hid the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, silenced whistle-blowers and then, via their negligence, exported the virus to the world. Below is also an excellent report on how the coronavirus
Via Bloomie: Relax, eat out and shop. That’s the latest message from the Chinese government to its people, after months of warning them to stay indoors because of the coronavirus. In a bid to jump start consumption that all but disappeared during the outbreak, authorities in some places are distributing vouchers, asking companies to give
We’ve already seen it in Italy, now the UK, via The Tele: Intensive care for coronavirus patients is now being limited to those “reasonably certain” to survive, a major NHS London trust has conceded. A department head at Imperial College Healthcare revealed on Sunday that fewer and fewer marginal patients are being selected for ventilator treatment because so
That it will be a depression is yesterday’s news. What kind then? Greg Jericho kicks us off with some useful musing: Through my lifetime there have been three “worst since the Great Depression” times for the economy – the early 1980s, the early 90s and the global financial crisis. In each case we never really
This much. Via Deutsche: A week ago, in the wake of news that China had reported a much greater drop in domestic spending in January-February than had been expected, we wrote that the global economy was moving into a severe recession and that Europe and the US would record the largest quarterly declines in GDP
The China bounce rolls on slowly: As the globe crashes: Global economy entering recession.
Via Capital Economics. China has taken another step forard with the reopening of Hebei: However, the global shock is still building. First in services then manufactures. Europe: Asia: And the US: More pain to come just about everywhere.
Via Capital Economics: Europe still falling: Asia too: And US: Some better signs for China. External shock still bearing down.
Via Nouriel Roubini: The shock to the global economy from COVID-19 has been both faster and more severe than the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) and even the Great Depression. In those two previous episodes, stock markets collapsed by 50% or more, credit markets froze up, massive bankruptcies followed, unemployment rates soared above 10%, and
They’re all going to crash: First services, then manufacturing, as we move up the value chain.
Via Capital Economics comes the painfully slow Chinese recovery: About to be derailed by everything else. Europe: Asia: And the US: Globla trade is about to go zero:
In his masterpiece, The World in Depression, Charles A. Kindleberger concludes the major cause of the Great Depression was a paralysis of leadership caused by the decline of the UK and the immaturity of the US. Neither was able to provide leadership and put themselves forward as the economy of last resort after the 1929 crash.
It is structural change not cyclical. Via Joseph Carson, Former Chief Economist Alliance Bernstein: Economic recession is an infrequent occurrence, but in a fundamental sense recessions are the economy’s way of cleansing the “rot” out the system that have been built up over time. This emanates from bad investments, bad loans, bad policies, excessive risk
China continues to crawl back towards normal activity. Via Capital Economics: While the rest of the world advances into shutdown. Europe: Asia: US: And if you think that China can resist a global shock, let alone when it is already on its knees, then think again: The post-virus v-shaped recovery narrative is fantasy for China
Via JPM: As before, we continue to assume that ground zero of the economic weakness is those consumer services with inadequate social distancing: air travel, movies, sporting events, etc. In our reckoning of where to draw the lines, this group represents around 7% of GDP. We assume activity in this group falls to 63% of
