Advertisement
Inside Out | The coronavirus brings the pain of job loss and cut salaries, but also relief for our overheating planet
- To understand the economic impact of Covid-19 on regular people, consider the travel and tourism industry. Amid travel restrictions and flight cancellations, the coronavirus pandemic is threatening 50 million jobs around the world
Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
As the world’s equity markets went into vertiginous free fall last week and the awesome economic ramifications of the Covid-19 pandemic finally sank in, Katie Martin at the Financial Times hit the nail on the head – investors are “being humbled by one thing they clearly had not considered: real life”.
For much of the past year, economists and investors anxious about the unsustainably inflamed state of global equity markets had been poring over spreadsheets in search of forces that would ultimately bring the market back to earth. A few had been looking to the climate crisis, and a few more at global oil prices. None had reckoned with the devastation of a humble coronavirus.
Real life has bitten back with a vengeance. CLSA estimated that US$13 trillion had been stripped from equity market values worldwide, noting that this was more or less equal to US$3 billion for each coronavirus death so far. Since the world’s financial markets are valued at around four times the size of the global economy, and with further equity market falls expected in the weeks ahead, there could be an awful lot of pain still to come.
Advertisement
But as central banks and hastily assembled government task forces talk about high-level monetary and fiscal relief measures, the challenge for most of us mere mortals is to get our heads around the real-life implications of what has happened, and where things go from here.
All the anecdotes are alarming: thousands of concerts, conferences, exhibitions and trade fairs being cancelled; schools being closed; film stars and political leaders testing positive; Europe’s football seasons being curtailed; the Olympics being threatened.
Some delays – like China’s National People’s Congress, or Donald Trump’s planned meeting with Asean leaders in Las Vegas – might not be such big losses. And I see great sense in postponing release of the new James Bond film, No Time to Die.
Advertisement
Select Voice
Select Speed
1.00x