The COVID-19 pandemic has hurled the economy of the United States into the deepest downturn in decades, with unemployment approaching 1930s levels, and the drop in GDP even exceeding that of the Great Depression, according to the New York Fed’s current estimate of -31%. Most analysts expect growth to resume rapidly once the crisis subsides, but some important structural issues have now come to the fore, offering the opportunity to assess how well-equipped the US economy is to face the future.
President Donald Trump plans to run his re-election campaign on the claim that he already created the “best economy ever” once, so we should trust him to do it again after the crisis is over; a slight majority of Americans seem to agree, giving the president a 12-point margin over his likely rival Joe Biden on who would better the handle the economy. Major indicators did indeed show constant economic growth and unemployment officially at its lowest level in over 50 years until February of 2020. Yet these figures gloss over both a considerable amount of inequality – which has fueled “populist” political movements in the US and around the globe in recent years – as well as the precarious financial equilibrium of many areas of the economy, areas that in a certain sense represented bubbles just waiting to be popped.
May 27, 2020
Economia, English, Notizie