Opening Statement from the March 2020 CCPM Forecaster 

Opening Statement from the March 2020 CCPM Forecaster 

Originally published on March 1, 2020  

Overview

Just as the weakness in the global economy appeared to be bottoming, fears of a slowdown due to the Coronavirus outbreak have added an additional layer of downside momentum to global growth.

We previously addressed many criticisms regarding public reaction to the Coronavirus outbreak in several audios and a recent article published on the website titled, “The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Con That Fooled the World.”

It’s shocking to see how much the world is reacting to something that’s much smaller in terms of the number of cases and fatalities to the seasonal flu (commonly caused by the Influenza virus). Given that we are currently only experiencing the early stages of the outbreak, things could get much worse. If reactions have been this bad with relatively few cases and fatalities, how bad will sentiment become when the outbreak advances?

To reiterate, at this stage we believe the response to the Coronavirus has been greatly exaggerated and is doing much more harm to the global economy than the actual outbreak.

But we cannot ignore sentiment even if it’s based on unfounded rationale. Widespread panic and irrational behavior stemming from the Coronavirus outbreak is putting downward pressure on global growth. We already see...