OPINION: Throw your usual economic indicators out the window. No one knows how deep the global recession will be because of the coronavirus -- or when this will end.
How deep will the world recession be this year? Don’t look at current economic forecasts for any guide. The only certainty is that measures of containment to fight the coronavirus pandemic, with lockdowns and a halt of economic activity in most Western countries, will shrink gross domestic product in most of the world. By how much? These days, your guess is as good as mine.
It depends, first, on the length of the lockdowns. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, whose economic studies are among the most reliable, estimated this week that each month of containment costs any given country some two percentage points of economic growth. A three-month lockdown — say, from mid-March to mid-June — would lower GDP by six percentage points. Europe was expected to grow less than 1.5% this year in the last pre-virus forecasts.
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