Phased return to work needed soon to keep jobs while preserving lives
Despite the very dismal outlook, we can still take actions to prevent a worst-case scenario
After going through a decade and managing to avoid a global recession, 2020 has been a rude awakening as the world plunges into recession and is experiencing the sharpest spike in unemployment since the Great Depression. With a lead time of at least two years to commercialise a vaccine, the globe is now trying to adjust to a new normal.
Out of the Covid-19 rubble questions arise about how to rebuild our fractured economy. A sickly patient before Covid-19, the economy went into surgery already weak. Credit ratings agencies downgraded our sovereign debt to junk, the government responded by taking drastic steps to try to revive the economy, injecting stimulus amounting to 10% of GDP, and the Reserve Bank threw caution to the wind by slashing rates 2.5 percentage point to 60-year lows. Yet we are left with many questions of how we will emerge from the lockdown, stuck between the Scylla and Charybdis of preserving lives at the cost of jobs...
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