FT’s Martin Wolf – World economy is now collapsing

• Ninety per cent of all countries will experience negative growth in real gross domestic product per head this year, against 62 per cent in 2009, when China’s robust expansion helped cushion the blow.
• IMF now forecasts a plunge of 12 per cent between the last quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2020 in advanced economies.
• In a bad scenario of a second C19 wave – government spending in advanced economies would be 10 percentage points higher relative to GDP in 2021 and government debt 20 percentage points higher in the medium term than in the already unfavourable baseline.
• If the world economy is broken apart, as happened in response to the Depression, the recovery will be blighted, if not slain.

Source: FT

 

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