Global Macro Views
Global Macro Views
Global Macro Views White Paper
May 2020
Authors & Contributors
The Global Macro Forum
These are reasons, on net, to believe that the upward leg of the “V” for economic activity is shallower and will not claw back all the ground lost in the downward one.
The coronavirus pandemic poses a generational challenge. In contrast to prior outbreaks, there are more resources to tackle the problem, both in terms of health care infrastructure to cope with its incidence and an ability to suspend economic activity to slow its spread. The latter involves keeping people away—as workers from their occupations and as spenders from the marketplace. As a result, the V-shaped path of the infection—it gets worse before it gets better—inflicts an even sharper V-shaped scar on the global economy.
