We can’t just restart the economy by restarting the economy. Work and sales and GDP won’t get back to normal until we beat the coronavirus and put workers and shoppers and investors minds at ease, says Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell:
The sooner we get the virus under control, the sooner businesses can reopen. And more important than that, the sooner people will become confident that they can resume certain kinds of activity. Going out, going to restaurants, traveling, flying on planes, those sorts of things. So that’s really going to tell us when the economy can recover [Jerome Powell, interviewed by Scott Pelley, 60 Minutes, 2020.05.17].
Full recovery won’t happen until we all get our shots, so maybe not until the end of 2021:
…assuming there’s not a second wave of the coronavirus, I think you’ll see the economy recover steadily through the second half of this year. I do think that people will be careful about resuming their typical spending behavior. So certain parts of the economy will recover much more slowly.
Travel, entertainment, things that we do that involve being around lots of other people. So for the economy to fully recover, people will have to be fully confident. And that may have to await the arrival of a vaccine. But in any case, the economy can continue to, can start getting better fairly soon.
…In the long run, and even in the medium run, you wouldn’t want to bet against the American economy. This economy will recover. And that means people will go back to work. Unemployment will get back down. We’ll get through this. It may take a while. It may take a period of time. It could stretch through the end of next year. We really don’t know. We hope that it will be shorter than that, but no one really knows. What we can do is the part of it that we can control — is to be careful as businesses go back to work. And each of us individually and as a group, you know, take those measures that will protect ourselves and each other from the further spread of the virus [Powell, 2020.05.17].
Chairman Powell says unemployment could reach the Great Depression level of 25% and GDP could “easily” be shrinking 20% or 20% this quarter, but he thinks we’re better positioned to turn our economy around than our great-grandparents were:
There’re some very fundamental differences. The first is that the cause here– we had a very healthy economy two months ago. And this is an outside event, it is a natural disaster, in effect. And that’s one big difference. In the ’20s when the Depression, well, when the crash happened and all that, the financial system really failed. Here, our financial system is strong has been able to withstand this. And we spent ten years strengthening it after the last crisis. So that’s a big difference. In addition, the last thing I’ll say is that the government response in the ’30s, the central banks were trying to raise interest rates to keep us on the gold standard all around the world. Exactly the opposite of what needed to be done.
In this case, you have governments around the world and central banks around the world responding with great force and very quickly. And staying at it. So I think all of those things point to what will be — it’s going to be a very sharp downturn. It should be a much shorter downturn than you would associate with the 1930s [Powell, 2020.05.17].
We can’t just manufacture a sense of normalcy to lure people out to the stores and restaurants and hotels again. We have to have real public health security, informed by real science, bolstered by real public policies that make real progress in lowering infection rates and saving lives. Absent real pandemic progress, all the stimulus money the Fed can digitally print will never fill the abyss of justified public pandemic uncertainty and fear.
Chairman Powell neglected to tell you he can’t fix the stoopid in drumpf’s administration as clearly advertised by this dip……
https://the-immoral-minority.com/health-and-human-services-secretary-alex-azar-says-that-it-is-not-important-that-a-vaccine-be-safe-or-effective-so-long-as-we-get-one/
How many have to die because of this clewless clown? BTW body count is 91,036 per this morning.
Supposed “real science” botched this thing from the start. Hospitalization rates are a tiny fraction of what was predicted. Ventilator needs a tiny fraction of what was predicted. Infection fatality rate a tiny fraction of what was predicted. We have “flattened the curve” to the point where hospitals are going bankrupt. The collateral damage to individuals and the economy will surpass the harm directly caused by the virus by orders of magnitude. This has been the greatest blunder in our country’s history, and it happened because we accepted the predictions and advice from the medical profession without scrutiny or question. Never again.
What’s next Neal; blame the dinosaurs for the asteroid?
This has been the greatest blunder in our country’s history, and it happened because we accepted the predictions and advice from the dumbest, most corrupt, unintelligent potus with no medical background claiming this was a hoax for months until the pandemic was way beyond containment.
Plus he blamed everyone else for his failure to act.
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ps this pandemic has yet to run its course. It ain’t over so don’t let your guard down too early.
That’s right, Neal, if we would have ignored the medical professionals we could have met all the numbers for hospitalizations, ventilators and deaths. Next time, let’s just ignore the experts and go for the gold. Next time we will just listen to Trump’s gut.
Neal is dead wrong, and for the reasons that Loren and MFI state. There are two words for those who ignore medical advice, sick and dead.
Fed member Neel Kashkari was interviewed on Minnesota Public Radio today. He thinks the real unemployment rate already is 25% now.
The Social Security hating GOP has a plan to destroy said program, led by the incompetent and bungling failure known as Jared. They call it the Eagle Plan. National Memo has the details and no paywall.
is.gd/saKyid
Veterans are losing this war with the Covid19 led by the failed trump and the trumpians.
“More than 1,000 people have died of covid-19 at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, the agency reported Monday, a grim milestone that took 65 days to officially reach — but leaves out hundreds of other veterans who died in state-run homes.
VA spokeswoman Christina Noel acknowledged VA’s count does not include veterans who have died at state-run veterans homes. That death count is at least 550, according to Vietnam Veterans of America, an advocacy group collecting nationwide data for a forthcoming report.
And even then, 28 states are not reporting veteran deaths, making the cumulative total unknown, said Linda Schwartz, a special adviser to the group and a former VA assistant secretary for policy and planning.” Washington Post 5.18.20
Thanks for your service now means thanks for your dying…at home.
We’ve past 90,000 Killed in Action from coast to coast, Canada to Mexico. Soon, we’ll surpass World War Deuce in deaths. The “greatest blunder in American history”, you got that right, boy howdy. 30 million unemployed is so unemployable.
Listening to photo op Thune , is about as dry as dust .Slick Mike I think does not have a clue and the half dusty about the same.Lord what did we do to deserve three awful congressmen.We need congress people to fight for a better living for the working class not only the 1 percent.
The predictions told us what would happen if we went about normal business. Science also predicted that if we changed our behavior, far fewer people would end up hospitalized and dead. Enough of us paid attention to make the latter prediction come true.
Now Neal, don’t go screwing up our good work by running around telling people there’s nothing to worry about. Stay home.
Old Neal: YOUR FIRED!…sputter, sputter…(to experts, scientists, infecting 1st responders, doctors, nurses: SAVE ME!!…sputter…dies)
Young Neal: YOU’RE FIRED!… asymptomatically infects everyone else too as he too will STOP taking hydrochory, (AND paying child support) in two days just like Chief Propagandist Trump.