we start in the United States it is of
course the world's largest economy and
today we have learnt that in the first
three months of this year it shrank as
an annual rate of 4.8% the country has
introduced lockdown measures to slow the
spread of coronavirus which has killed
more than 58,000 people there and as you
can see from this graph that the US
economy has suffered the sharpest drop
since the financial crisis more than a
decade ago it ends the longest expansion
in US history as coronavirus virtually
shut down the country but the figures
don't actually reflect the full extent
of this crisis since the country did not
begin its lockdown measures until March
so as The Economist Mohamed el-erian
points out on Twitter the next quarter
could see the US economy contracted by
as much as 40 percent well here he is
outlining what this will mean it's a
battle against global depression and
what today's number tells you is two
things one is the urgency of containing
the damage so that short-term hits don't
become long-term hits and that's and the
second issue it tells you is that we've
got to build a runway for medical
advances to be able to sort out this
lives vs. livelihood equation and
importantly not just to win the war
against a depression but to secure the
peace we fail to do that in 2008 we won
the war against the depression then but
we didn't secure a piece of high
sustainable inclusive growth today's
number tells you that even now we have
to think about winning the war and
securing the peace well despite the
threats to economic growth the US
Federal Reserve's has said that they
will be keeping interest rates between
is nought and point to five percent the
former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers
says that containing the corona virus
outbreak is still America's primary
concern we do know that economic
downturns cast a substantial shadow
forward and the people who are going to
be the victims of this in many cases are
the people who are coming out of school
into a very weak
economy and studies show that people who
come out of school during very difficult
times the impact of that is there 20
years later on their wages and the
quality of the jobs they have so it's a
very big deal to do what we can
everything we can to support the economy
through this period but we need to
remember that it all starts with the
virus we people are terrified to work
with others or terrified to go into a
store you can do whatever you want with
interest rates and you can have whatever
fiscal policy want but you're still
gonna have an economy that's weakened
well the decision over how and when to
reopen the US economy has caused new
divides amongst Americans and Nick
Bryant has been speaking to some of them
in New York can't even wrap my head
around him it's incredible Steve
Barbarella runs a road building firm in
Staten Island which he fears will be
bankrupt by June
he's a trump supporter who believes the
Democrats who run New York at being too
cautious if I'm not working in this
economy he's not opened up and these
fear mongers don't back off where they
got everybody scared to death we all go
out of business
Steve it's a vicious virus I've had it
myself you accept that and I'm sorry to
hear that the reality of it is people
are going to continue to get sick I
don't think they're gonna continue to
get sick at any alarming rate
we're seeing more beggars on New York
streets this is Harlem a mainly
african-american community severely hit
by this health and economic contagion
and this is upscale Soho the home of
high-end retail boarded up like a
hurricane is about to rip through which
economically it has every single
shutdown day but public health officials
such as Daniel Boone pod who live in
these communities warned against the
rush to reopen people are hurting
financially they're struggling to feed
their families but we really need to
take this slow because I would hate for
us to have to shut down the economy
again if we get more cases so some of
the perspectives from New York well
here's some air he's saying with more on
the tug of war which is happening in the
US over public health and economic
growth we're seeing lots of different
state level governments are really
trying to grapple with which is why
you're seeing that in parts of the
country in places like Georgia for
example you're seeing some slow
reopening but of course the great fear
is if you start to reopen parts of the
economy too quickly are you going to
spark yet another coronavirus wave and
will that be even more serious but
there's no way to discount the kinds of
severe economic numbers that we're
seeing and when you want to talk about
like these economic disparities it
certainly is being evidenced here in New
York again we saw a part of that in
Nick's package the economic disparities
that exist in New York this pandemic is
there is no doubt it is going to
exacerbate those and that is one of the
challenges in just how do you try and
protect all of the citizens again while
trying to reopen the economy knowing
full well just the economic tsunami that
is coming through this country