Sunday, April 26, 2020

World recession deepens

We have at this stage only a few countries which have released March 2020 industrial production data.  The big falls started happening (outside China) in March.  So here's a chart of the year-on-year percentage change in the average of industrial production for China and the USA (which have released March data) compared with the the year-on-year percentage change in my calculation of world industrial production (only available to February).

Numerous indicators have shown that the world economy had started a new upturn, which the covid crash has aborted.  You can see this in the slight uptick in world IP in February.  The USA and China together make up 32.1% of the world economy, and you can see how close the correspondence between world and US/Chinese IP is.  We are clearly heading towards GFC lows.  Because the covid crash has been a rolling affair, by which I mean it's hit different countries at different times and scales, and because lockdown also has been imposed at different times, the recovery will lag.  That's also before we consider that international borders will remain closed affecting air travel, hotels, and restaurants.  The covid crash affected services first.  Now its impact will spread into industrial production.  It still seems likely to me that the low point of year-on-year change in IP and GDP could be as bad as or (probably) worse than during the GFC.

This is a very unusual recession.  But as always in economics, feed-back happens.  The supply shock of lockdowns is leading to a demand shock as businesses close and lay off or furlough workers which will in turn lead to financial shocks as over-extended companies go bankrupt, as workers default on mortgages, as developing countries default on their debt.  In "normal" recessions it is more usual for financial shocks to lead to demand shocks which feeds back into more financial crises.

I do not think it will be  a V-shaped recovery.  The USA is floundering, their management of the covid crisis has been abysmal, and fiscal stimulus has been too little, too late.  The Fed gets it; the administration doesn't.  Developing countries in which I include India, Russia and Brazil, as well as other less developed countries, make up more than 20% of the world economy.  Their health systems are too basic to deal with the coronavirus well; they are too poor to borrow vast sums to stimulate their economies; they have too many heavily indebted companies and governments which have borrowed in US$, debts which will not be repaid.  Europe is squabbling about a stimulus package.  Foolishness on the part of the German bloc, but alas all too reminiscent of the follies of the 2011 Euro crisis.  So the European recovery will be slow, the agony of developing countries is far from over, and the US will struggle to get off its knees.   And a big chunk of services will remain way below normal.  More than half the world economy will flounder along in the shallows.  Some of it will drown.



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