Here are the latest news items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. We also cover hedges, derivatives, and obscura. Most of these items are from the “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor, JWR. Today, we further examine the economic impact of the Wuhan Flu pandemic. (See the Tangibles Investing section.)
Precious Metals:
How silver’s 50% rally in 2020 has transformed the industry
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Another rush to cash? Analysts are cautiously watching stocks, gold price
Economy & Finance:
Coronavirus: Hit to global economy ‘will be less than expected’ in 2020. Here is a quote:
“The damage to the global economy this year will be less than previously expected, but still “unprecedented”, a leading international body says.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development now predicts a decline of 4.5% in 2020, versus the 6% drop forecast in June.
It means it no longer expects the UK to have the deepest contraction of the major G20 economies this year.
But the 10.1% drop would still make Britain one of the hardest hit.”
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At Wolf Street: Who Bought the $3.3 Trillion Piled on the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt Since March?
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At Zero Hedge: Yelp Reveals 60% Of Business Closures Are Now Permanent. Here is how the article opens:
“The virus pandemic shock is generating deep economic scarring, the likes of which many have never seen before. The virus-induced downturn has led the economy into a “liquidity trap,” in which interest rates will likely reside on the zero lower bound until 2023, and monetary policy could have trouble stimulating the real economy besides artificially inflating asset prices. As Washington pumps fiscal injection after fiscal injection into the real economy, creating unstable artificial growth, the latest lapse of fiscal support, now 46 days, has sent the economy into another slump.
For more color on the deep economic scarring, not just a deterioration in the labor market, we turn our attention to a Yelp report published Wednesday that revealed as of Aug. 31, 163,735 businesses have closed on the platform, a 23% increase since mid-July.
Yelp pointed out an increase of permanent business closures over the past six months, now reaching 97,966, or about 60% of closed businesses will never reopen their doors again.”