As governments ease lockdowns of businesses and allow consumers to travel and shop again, measures of high-frequency data and confidence increasingly suggest a bottom has been reached in the worst global recession since the Great Depression. A new set of daily activity gauges from Bloomberg Economics finds almost all of the economies it monitors witnessed a pick-up in activity since late March and early April, although no country is yet approaching its pre-virus levels. Germany, Japan and France are among those rebounding the fastest, while Spain and the U.K. remain relatively weak.
A legacy of higher unemployment, bankruptcies and health fears also means recoveries are likely to be slow and sluggish after an initial bounce, with a full rebound unlikely before the discovery of a vaccine. The risk remains that the deadly virus could spike again, forcing constraints to be slapped back on. Read more…
