Den amerikanske recession i andet kvartal bliver ekstrem voldsom som Depressionen i 30’erne, men den bliver mere kortvarig end de fleste recessioner på grund af en mere effektiv indsats mod den aktuelle krise, mener Merrill.

Uddrag fra Merrill:

Macro Weakness vs. Market Rebound: Observations from Three
Recent Crises

Driven by a 7.6% fall in real consumption and an 8.6% decline in business investment
spending, the 4.8% annualized drop in first-quarter U.S. real gross domestic product (GDP)
released last week confirmed that a period of sharp economic contraction began in March.

With the impact of pandemic-related shutdowns in consumer and business activity only
captured in the final two weeks of Q1, the bulk of the Coronavirus fallout will be reflected in
the current quarter, and consensus across 75 private forecasters measured by Bloomberg is
for a -26% collapse in real gross domestic product (GDP) for Q2.

The onset of a recession will nonetheless not be made official until it is dated by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which requires the downturn to be both spread across the economy and to last for more than a few months.

Our internal composite recession indicator, however, crossed the 50% threshold for extreme recession risk with the unemployment claims figures released in mid-March, and it has since spiked to 100% with broader weakness across its industrial production and vehicle sales components (Exhibits 1 and 2).

The depth of the economic contraction expected this quarter would dwarf the -8.4%
recorded in the fourth quarter of 2008 and the -10.0% recorded in the first quarter of
1958 (the worst single quarters in post-World War II history so far).

But if the current downturn ends in the third quarter as expected, it will not only be the deepest economic contraction of the post-war era but also the shortest.

This is where allusions to the Great Depression made frequently by media headlines and commentators break down. The projected weakness in sequential GDP this quarter would be the most severe since the 1930s, but the policy environment and the underlying drivers of the downturn represent critical differences that should make for a far more benign market outcome.