"Wall Street dreams of kissing Sleeping Beauty"

"Wall Street has decided to tackle the coronavirus crisis and is already living the next world idyll. The Stock Market is betting on a rapid, V-shaped rebound that will allow the economy to start again and think that everything will start as before. "
"Wall Street has decided to tackle the coronavirus crisis and is already living the next world idyll. The Stock Market is betting on a rapid, V-shaped rebound that will allow the economy to start again and think that everything will start as before. " Carlo Allegri / REUTERS

Chronic. The financiers are grown-ups who dream of kissing the Sleeping Beauty to wake her up from a hundred years of sleep. As if nothing had happened in the meantime and time had stood still. This is what Wall Street is doing, which decided to tackle the Covid-19 crisis and is already living the next world idyll. The stock market is betting on a rapid rebound, in a "V" shape, which will allow the economy to start again, and thinks that everything will start again as before. To make this dream come true, during the forced sleep of the economy, the good and bad fairies are activated. So that everything looks the same, better.

The first fairy is called Silicon Valley. The Covid-19 crisis is America’s high-tech triumph over tourism Europe. The Gafam (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft) will emerge strengthened from the crisis, allowing the planet to continue to turn at a minimum during the epidemic, while a large number of high-tech SMEs, such as Zoom teleconferencing, have emerged. The crisis has claimed collateral victims – the air, the automobile, the SMEs – but, in essence, it has accelerated the shift into the virtual world of the XXIe century.

The second fairy is the United States Congress and the Trump administration. Never again say that the United States is the country of laissez-faire: Washington has decided on a massive recovery plan to help citizens and businesses. 660 billion dollars (609.40 million euros) in loans to SMEs to cover their salaries; $ 2,400 a month in additional federal unemployment insurance; an individual check from the tax authorities for $ 1,200.

Concrete reality

In total, the stimulus voted by Congress reached $ 3.5 trillion, or about 15% of gross domestic product (GDP)! A figure to compare with the recession, which should be around 7%, against an expected growth of about 2%. "The US state reacted to the shock. He took 150% of the cost of the crisis to bear ", calculates Patrick Artus, chief economist of Natixis. There is no reason, therefore, for the scholarship recipients to worry since the state takes on more than the addition.

The third fairy is the United States Federal Reserve (Fed), which finances the economy all the time. Don't be intimidated by big words like "Quantitative easing" ("Quantitative easing", liquidity facilitation program), or by the fact that the size of the bank's balance sheet has grown by $ 2.3 trillion since the start of the crisis.

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