On Where the US Economy is Right Now with COVID-19
/Currently, in the US it’s basically a question of how long the Federal Reserve can hold the sky up on its back while fighting heavy gravity. The way I see things right now:
1) In 2 months we hit the 2nd highest unemployment levels in modern US history, at the fastest rate in US history.
2) There is no real end in sight to the shutdowns or the virus.
3) There is no plan from the Federal US government.
4) Unemployment is and will continue to get worse on a daily basis for the foreseeable future.
5) The US government will be printing TRILLIONS of dollars over the next several years. The US (and rest of the world’s too!) debt levels and deficits will go higher then WW2 likely by end of 2020.
6) Every day this continues consumer confidence continues to slowly drop, meaning even if we partially re-open, people aren’t going to be buying stuff. It will take years, even once a vaccine is invented, for people to go back to the levels of spending/confidence as at the end of 2019.
My buddy who is a life long hedge fund guy sent me the following this morning: "I have no clue how the market works anymore. Maybe I never did. I checked the S&P500 this morning and I could barely believe it”
For those who know what the relatively new theory of Modern Monetary Theory consists of, well we are about to find out in a global real world experiment if it is right or wrong. Buckle up.