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Coronavirus Threatens To Unleash Next Global Economic Crisis

March 6th, 2020

 

In 2007,just before the last great worldwide financial and economic crisis was unleashed, a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb was published entitled The Black Swan. It explored how unpredictable and outlier can events can unleash extreme impacts of greave consequence. Though Taleb’s book foretold of the Global Financial Crisis that was about to occur, it is just as prescient regarding the unleashing of the Corona virus and its increasingly devastating impact on the global economy.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Corona virus, specifically the strain identified as Covid-19, began spreading like wildfire towards the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China. Since then, it has been occurring in dozens of countries, leading health authorities worldwide to label Covid-19 a pandemic. And though we are only in the early stages of the outbreak, the global economy is already in dire straits.

Stock markets are plummeting, global supply chains are being disrupted, the travel and tourism and related industries are being devastated, and economic fear is becoming as contagious as Covid-19 spread with virulence.

The economist noted for predicting  the 2007-2008 financial collapse, Nouriel Roubini, otherwise known as “Dr. Doom,” is now predicting massive economic collapse as the Corona virus spreads and intensifies. In his views, any equity recoveries are only temporary and the worst is ahead of us, with stock markets possibly contracting by 40 percent or more. Other elements, which Roubini describes as Whites Swans, such as tension with Iran and the China-U.S. trade war, will further exacerbate the economic consequences of Covid-19.

This is not a mere correction or cyclical recession that is being discussed, but a global economic depression of massive proportions. Central banks are already slashing interest rates to near zero, and other signs of panic are setting in. The next Global Economic Crisis appears to be just ahead, with the world geopolitically far more divided and conflicted than was the case back in 2008.

 

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