“The world economy is on the precipice of its worst crisis since World War II. Economic activity, financial markets and private-sector confidence are all cratering. And if international cooperation remains at its current level, a far more severe collapse is yet to come.
“…a rapid recovery seems highly unlikely. Demand has been ravaged, there have been extensive disruptions to manufacturing supply chains, and a financial crisis is already under way. Unlike the 2008-09 crash, which was triggered by liquidity shortages in financial markets, the Covid-19 crisis involves fundamental solvency issues for companies and entire industries well beyond the financial sector.
“Moreover, the current shock is simultaneous and universal.”
https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/1908320/anatomy-of-the-coronavirus-collapse
“US businesses hit by the coronavirus are reporting declines in sales and investment for the first time since the 2008 global financial crisis, according to a survey released Monday. And it is uncertain when conditions will improve…”
https://www.gulftoday.ae/business/2020/04/27/us-firms-see-worst-outlook-since-financial-crisis
“The coronavirus and the desperate economic measures used to fight it are exposing some of the wounds inflicted during the Great Recession.
“While some Americans may be able to recover quickly when the pandemic subsides, the outbreak poses bigger threats to vulnerable communities that didn’t benefit as much as others from the past 10 years of economic growth.”
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/494625-coronavirus-exposes-scars-of-great-recession
“Banks are bracing for fallout as more people struggle to make credit card payments due to lost paychecks amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal…
“Credit card bills are usually the first debt people stop paying when times are tough, and analysts are anticipating defaults and charge-offs to accelerate. Further, banks can do little about nonpayment since the credit is unsecured.”
https://www.pymnts.com/debt/2020/banks-prepare-wave-skipped-credit-card-payments/
“Tyson Foods is warning that “millions of pounds of meat” will disappear from the supply chain as the coronavirus pandemic pushes food processing plants to close, leading to product shortages in grocery stores across the country.
“”The food supply chain is breaking,” wrote board chairman John Tyson in a full-page advertisement published Sunday in The New York Times, Washington Post and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/26/business/tyson-foods-nyt-ad/index.html
“Nearly 29m more people will fall into poverty this year in Latin America and the Caribbean because of the economic collapse triggered by the coronavirus…
“…setting the region back more than a decade in its struggle to reduce inequality, a top UN official has warned.”
http://archive.vn/P0JBH#selection-1841.0-1841.264
“While billionaires isolate themselves at luxurious hideaways on the Mediterranean during the coronavirus outbreak, residents in deprived and crowded areas of France are now facing a surge in deaths, along with unrest on the streets.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/26/europe/coronavirus-france-inequality-intl/index.html
“German police wearing riot gear and face masks clashed with dozens of protesters demonstrating in central Berlin against the coronavirus lockdown on public life.”
“The European Central Bank (ECB) will start buying riskier debt and expand the size of its bond-buying programme, economists predict, as it intensifies efforts to shield the euro zone economy and financial markets from the coronavirus crisis.”
“Worries are mounting about the ability of Europe’s financial system, in particular its fragile banks, to make it through the coronavirus crisis unscathed. Funding costs rose Friday. Ratings companies downgraded several banks. And policy makers are worried about weaker lenders in hard-hit Southern European economies and Germany.”
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/pressure-builds-on-europes-fragile-banking-system/
“Zimbabwe has had to extend its nationwide lockdown because of a rise in coronavirus cases.
“But the restrictions have come at a cost, raising concerns that a food crisis affecting half the population will get worse.”
“The divide between rich and poor in South Africa, already the widest in the world, has never been more apparent…
““We can get on top of the medical side,” he says. “But no one cars about viruses when they’re starving.””
““We are dying of hunger,” one man from Tripoli yelled during a protest earlier this month. “We want dignity,” another said. A taxi driver set his car on fire when security forces fined him for breaking the lockdown rules. A street vendor threw his produce on the streets in frustration after the police suspended his business. A jobless construction worker who can no longer afford rent tried to sell his kidney.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/lebanon-protests-200413121904178.html
“Millions of Indians who have been without work for weeks are facing hunger as the country battles the coronavirus outbreak.
“The most vulnerable are daily wage earners, contract workers and migrant labourers who have been without work and earnings since the country was shut down on 25 March.”
“As the pandemic spreads through India and south-east Asia — which together are home to about 2bn people — the health emergency is quickly mutating into an economic crisis.
““Asia is in the midst of a devastating recession,” said Gareth Leather, senior Asia economist at Capital Economics, a research firm.”
http://archive.vn/cON3k#selection-1905.108-1909.133
“China’s Industrial profits fell 34.9%YoY in March after falling 38.3%YoY in January to February.
“The continued deep fall in industrial profits shows that China has faced a continued fall in demand for goods from foreign economies due to Covid-19’s impact on those economies’ job markets and wages growth.”
https://think.ing.com/snaps/china-industrial-profits-continued-nosedive/
“The Bank of Japan expanded monetary stimulus on Monday and pledged to buy unlimited amount of bonds to keep borrowing costs low as the government tries to spend its way out of the deepening economic pain from the coronavirus pandemic.”
“Global central banks remain under pressure to do more to support their economies through the coronavirus recession even after driving interest rates to record lows and pledging to spend trillions of dollars on asset purchases.”
“The historic collapse in the price of oil is inflicting another shock on a weakened world economy, creating a disinflationary risk for some and severely denting budgets in producers from Saudi Arabia to Russia and Canada…
“The oil slump is another challenge for central banks if it persists and feeds through to broader price trends.”
https://businessmirror.com.ph/2020/04/26/oil-crash-adds-new-shock-to-limping-world-economy/
“For companies in the U.S. and Europe, ultimately what may happen is a broad reassessment about whether key supplies ought to be manufactured closer to home.
““For the first time we’re seeing not just one or two countries closing down, we have three countries closing down,” said David Farr, CEO of Emerson Electric Co., which supplies automation equipment to the oil and gas industries and produces consumer goods, such as garbage disposals and shop vacuums. “So what we’re going to have to do here is evaluate this from an economic standpoint and enterprise-risk standpoint.”
“For the first time in a decade, the world risks being cut off from Russian wheat at a time when some key buyers are rushing to import it.
“The top shipper last month limited sales through June to protect its own supply as the coronavirus crisis sparks food-security concerns around the world.”
“The world is “sleepwalking into disaster” as Covid-19 restrictions mean more than one billion people face food shortages, Concern Worldwide has warned…
“Concern’s Director Of International Programmes Anne O’Mahony said we ”must wake up to the unprecedented challenge we are facing in the developing world”.”
https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/world-sleepwalking-disaster-more-one-21929981
“Simply put, the pandemic is intensifying ongoing injustice and inequality all over the world.”
https://ricochet.media/en/3066/a-wave-of-mass-social-unrest-lies-on-the-horizon-as-poverty-increases
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