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

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

Via Capital Economics: Europe still falling: Asia too: And US: Some better signs for China. External shock still bearing down.

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

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

University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers contends that the US economy is probably already in recession due to the coronavirus pandemic. He says that unless governments around the world take ‘drastic actions’ to contain the virus, the economic downturn could be as bad as the Great Depression, when the unemployment rate reached 25% in

Via Michael Wilson, Morgan Stanley chief equity strategist: Almost two years ago, we published a report titled The Great Cycle Debate. In that report, I argued that US equities were likely to experience a cyclical bear market that would take several years to complete. This bear market would play out as a consolidation rather than a

It’s not fun reading. Thr parabola forms: For deaths as well: Mortality rates are not good: Korea has been by far the most aggressive tester (you can do it drive-thru believe it or not) and that may be working to slow the virus: Europe and the US are in big trouble: Winter is still very

Via S&P: Growth across Asia-Pacific will slow to 4.0% in 2020, the lowest since the Global Financial Crisis, due to the coronavirus outbreak. A U-shaped recovery should start later in 2020 but by then overall economic damage is likely to reach US$211 billion. That’s according to an article S&P Global Ratings published titled “COVID-19 Now

And so it goes, via Bloomberg: Italy announced a nationwide closing of its schools until March 15 as it redoubles efforts to curb the worst outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic in Europe. The shutdown of schools and universities, set to start Thursday, will further hit an economy that’s expected to contract sharply in coming months.

Via Morgan Stanley: Disruption, Dislocations and Delayed Recovery With economic activity disrupted and capital markets dislocated, investors are debating if Covid-19 will derail the global cycle. In times of sharp drops in asset markets, pessimistic prognoses are easy to make, but it is at times like this when some perspective is warranted. Coming into the year,