Coronavirus World Economy Forecast

Dear All,

The below is my opinion, may or may not agree with it. If you do not agree with me, throw it in the wastepaper basket. Alternatively, if you agree with me I hope you will find these comments useful.

There is no doubt, that very few countries in the world were prepared for such a medical challenge.  I believe that the UK is relatively well prepared, the level of preparedness throughout the EU varies from country to country. The USA is in a bad position and developing countries face a very high risk of substantial mortalities. The Far East will have difficulties in regaining their current level of productivity in less than 3 - 5 years.

The world economy is unlikely to recover in less than 4 - 5 years.

We do not all run the same risks of infection. The risk of infection in some places of London is about 50 per 10,000 people. In Oxfordshire 5 per 10,000, In Salop 2 per 10,000 and North Wales 1.5 per 10,000. Obviously these risk levels could change over the coming months.

As an example, in 1940 many families moved out of London and rented houses in the country, where the risks were much lower than the risks in London.

I believe the virus will substantially change how we will live in the future. As examples retailing will be in substantial decline whereas home delivery will benefit substantially.

Many more people will work at home in the future, this will require new software etc to make this possible.  High-tech industries will become more important as time goes by the industry will do very well. Their development are likely to benefit service economies more than manufacturing economies.

I would expect that the risk of the Coronavirus will be behind us in less than two years but the knock-on economic damage will be with us for five years.

In the long term, it is my view that the UK is very well placed because its economy is largely based on services. On the other hand, countries with economies, which are largely based on manufacturing industries, will be in substantially worse positions because many of their manufacturing companies will fail.  Service  businesses are usually very much more flexible than manufacturing  businesses.

I think that parents with children should take the above (or their opinion as to how the corona virus will change the world) into account when they review how the virus is likely to effect them.

I expect that in the short term,  the very poor and developing countries are likely to suffer more than the advanced countries, but they will recover faster than a number of the currently leading developed countries. The coronavirus could trigger the breakup of the EU. I expect that the UK will be able to recover from the coronavirus downturn but the USA, China, and Japan could be amongst the losers.

The wholesale printing of money which we are currently seeing will have its consequences. The US$ is likely to be in decline and it is possible that the world will totally restructure its international finance procedures. Cryptocurrency may or may not be the front runner, but it will become substantially more important in the future.

The whole structure of world power will adjust itself over the next few years.

I hope the above may be helpful and any comments would be appreciated.

Good luck to you all.

David Mainwaring

Photo by CDC on Unsplash