Ripple effects of downturn show pandemic’s early economic toll was just the beginning
Plunging consumer and business spending spreading across the economy
...
Sales have fallen because the town’s biggest employer, Howmet Aerospace, recently laid off nearly one-quarter of its 2,800 employees. Howmet’s commercial aerospace business is a casualty of the coronavirus pandemic that has grounded thousands of airplanes and cast into doubt air carriers’ hopes of quickly resuming normal operations.
Even as the White House celebrates tentative signs of a labor market rebound, the ripples from Howmet’s decision show that the pandemic’s imprint upon the U.S. economy is hardening into a scar. What began in China five months ago as a distant threat to U.S. factories’ supply chains has evolved into a mammoth shortfall in consumer and business spending that could hobble the economy for years.
- and -
More than $6.5 trillion in household wealth vanished during the first three months of this year as the pandemic tightened its hold on the global economy, the Federal Reserve said this week. That’s roughly equivalent to the economies of the United Kingdom and France combined.
“This is the biggest economic shock in the U.S. and in the world, really, in living memory,” Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell said Wednesday. “We went from the lowest level of unemployment in 50 years to the highest level in close to 90 years, and we did it in two months.”
The piece goes on with practically nothing but bad news.
Sales have fallen because the town’s biggest employer, Howmet Aerospace, recently laid off nearly one-quarter of its 2,800 employees. Howmet’s commercial aerospace business is a casualty of the coronavirus pandemic that has grounded thousands of airplanes and cast into doubt air carriers’ hopes of quickly resuming normal operations.
Even as the White House celebrates tentative signs of a labor market rebound, the ripples from Howmet’s decision show that the pandemic’s imprint upon the U.S. economy is hardening into a scar. What began in China five months ago as a distant threat to U.S. factories’ supply chains has evolved into a mammoth shortfall in consumer and business spending that could hobble the economy for years.
- and -
More than $6.5 trillion in household wealth vanished during the first three months of this year as the pandemic tightened its hold on the global economy, the Federal Reserve said this week. That’s roughly equivalent to the economies of the United Kingdom and France combined.
“This is the biggest economic shock in the U.S. and in the world, really, in living memory,” Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell said Wednesday. “We went from the lowest level of unemployment in 50 years to the highest level in close to 90 years, and we did it in two months.”
The piece goes on with practically nothing but bad news.
And we haven't been able to spare any Attention Span Bandwidth for the earthquakes and the tornadoes and dam collapses we've already seen in 2020.
And, we're just now coming up on Wild Fire Season.
No comments:
Post a Comment