Economic Activity Slows as Coronavirus Risk Increases
As the Novel Coronavirus is now having an increasingly severe impact in Europe and is expected to spread deeper in the United States. Economists are informing the community that there will be a great global recession risk and possible fallout of the American economy.
As stated by Carl Tannenbaum, a chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago "Businesses of all kinds, in a lot of places, being impaired really [made] me skeptical that this is something that would fade quickly and from which we would recover quickly," he also added that "And that realization is now cascading through, both to investors and to policymakers, that this is a situation that is more serious than initially thought."
A lot of American companies account for overseas production and the sales of China for a share of business trades and profits. Apple, Starbucks and the chipmaker Qualcomm, are now vast lowering their earnings in the past few days.
Tannebaum also observes that the Federal Reserve narrows down the interest rate by a quarter of point by the month of April. Just a few ago, with other economists together they expected that the central bank would have slightly decreased its percentage for the rest of the year.
Also this week the oil prices, treasury yields and stock indexes had dramatically decreased. The Dow narrowed down for a fifth straight session. Wednesday now is down to more than 8% from a week ago.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics stated that "The equity market is central to the U.S. economy," it also greatly points out that the population is particularly prone to a market downturn because they have much of their investment in it and it is greatly affected by the recent case of the disease.
Zandi also added after the reports that Italy had a rapid spread of the virus, it woke up as a major turning point. Also after the reports that were received by U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that infections were bound to increase in the United States it was raised the possibilities of global recession to 50% from 20% last week. If the disease continues to push to a pandemic situation the economy will be in a recession.
As of Wednesday the report for the coronavirus case rose up to 81,000 cases in more than 36 countries with a death of 2,750 and vast majority is in China. As of now the rate outside of China increases but according to the World Health Organization they still didn't identify the case as pandemic.
As reported in China, where the COVID-19 virus was first detected in December. It was observed that the infections in the recent days are now lowering. Also to the key parts of China where had been in a virtual lockdown. Many operations resumed. But as things look good in China, new cases were discovered in South Korea, Italy and Iran. It had a great fear that the economy might have a great effect that will only widen as countries and other companies operate there, similarly severe responses to keep the virus in control, such as travel bans and temporary closing down of factories and business.
As of now in the face of full uncertainties there are companies that take levels to the extreme measures. Just like Nestle, this week announced that 291,000 of its employees globally would hold off on their business ventures until the middle of the next month.
Even before the outbreak of the virus, the economy was slightly decreasing due to President Trump's trade war about Brexit and rising tensions in South America and Middle East. But as of now in several big economies the countries - Japan, Germany, Italy, South Korea could have a technical recession as it was found out that two of the following quarters have a negative output on this.
The officials of FED are seemingly not distracted about the narrowing of stock market or that the produce on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to drastic measure as the investor pull out riskier assets for the safety of the US government bonds. Vice Chair, Richard H. Clarida also announced that "it is still too soon to even speculate about either the size or the persistence of these effects, or whether they will lead to a material change in the outlook." during the economic conference in Washington on Tuesday afternoon. He also added that the central bank monetary policy and US economy are both in a "good place" the comments of the public are also repeated by the Fed chair Jerome H. Powell
Larry Kudlow, Trump's chief economic advisor, also said and insisted that even if the rest of the world tumbled into a vast majority of a downfall, the U.S. could remain an island of wealth and success.
Kurdlow also stated that "Right here we're doing awfully well now," he said on a report in CNBC on Tuesday as stocks were drastically decreasing. "We have contained this," he added. "I won't say airtight, but it's pretty close to airtight." This was a report as of Wednesday that there were at least 60 confirmed patients that have the Coronavirus in the U.S with no deaths.
On Wednesday when President Trump returned to America from a trip to India he showed frustrations as the increase of the virus happens in America and seek for assurance of the Americans in an evening news conference.
In a tweet earlier Wednesday, he praised his administration's response to the virus, and lashed out at the news media for making the coronavirus On a seen tweet earlier this Wednesday, he commended the administrations' actions to the virus and beat out the media's news in telling the people that the virus "look as bad as possible, including panicking markets."
According to the Oxford Economics' report they said that the economy of the United states will be having a hard time to balance in the first quarter and that the growth for the whole year as a whole will more likely to come in a below average level rate of 1.5%
Even though Kudlow's declaration that "there's no supply disruptions out there yet," many companies and analysts in various industries can certify if not.
An electronics industry trade group named IPC, announced to the public that this week the manufacturers were already having a hard time, and surveys reported they are expecting, on their products delays of at least five weeks.
IPC's president and chief executive John Mitchell said: "The delays will likely have ripple effects for the rest of the year."