The outlook across the COVID-19 economic chasm

In October 2019, a giant new suspension bridge opened across the Yangtze River in Wuhan, China. An engineering marvel, at 1,700 meters it has the world’s longest double-deck single span as part of a 2.57-mile suspension bridge. Who was to know at about the same time a novel coronavirus was emerging nearby that would make the city of Wuhan known throughout the world?

COVID-19, a global pandemic, is first and foremost a public health emergency. As a result of the necessary medical policy responses around the world to slow the spread and mitigate the health impacts, it became an economic crisis. An economic chasm has opened in most major economies, the likes of which we have not seen before. Policymakers have swiftly conjured up an unprecedented fiscal and monetary response, to throw a bridge over the chasm of their locked-down economies. That bridge leads to a new economic environment, possibly new ways of life, that at a minimum seem likely to last a few years, perhaps more