Will coronavirus shock the global economy into long-term thinking?| Larry Elliott
The state has had to pump in money to prop up a system in which too many people were hanging on by their fingertips
The financial markets think the worst is over. Share prices have largely been rising for the past week (although on Tuesday they went down) on the basis that some countries are starting to lift the lockdown restrictions imposed to limit the Covid-19 pandemic. Amid sighs of relief all round on Wall Street, the hope is that it will soon be business as usual.
In one sense, it's not an unreasonable thought because the virulence of this particular strain of the coronavirus could not have been predicted. It was what economists call an exogenous shock: something that has a big impact, but comes from outside the system itself.
Related: Watchdog identifies sectors hit hardest by Covid-19 in Britain
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