La contracción económica se
presume mayor si hay una segunda ola. Las previsiones son muy pobres…
(Reuters) - The economic growth projections Federal
Reserve officials offered last week by and large do not factor in a potential
second wave of coronavirus infections later this year, Fed Chair Jerome Powell
said on Tuesday.
Powell’s remark came in the first of two days of
testimony to Congress, during which he repeated a now-standard mantra that the
disease will determine the strength and persistence of any recovery from the
recession that began in February.
That said, it appears a second wave is not his or his
colleagues’ base case.
At their meeting last week, 17 Fed policymakers
provided their first take on where the economy goes next in the wake of the
pandemic. The median view called for a full-year contraction in gross domestic
product of 6.5% from 2019.
“Does this projection assume a potential second wave
of coronavirus and the accompanying economic impacts?” Senator Krysten Sinema,
an Arizona Democrat, asked Powell.
“That number is actually the median of the projections
of the 17 participants of the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) so it isn’t
an official prediction of the Fed,” Powell said in reply. “It will be based on
different assumptions made by different people. Each of the 17 will have
probably made a somewhat different assumption.”
“I would think the answer to your question, though,
largely will be that ... my colleagues will not principally have assumed that
there will be a substantial second wave.”
“Oh, that’s concerning,” Sinema retorted.
To be sure, the 17 projections cover a wide-range of
potential outcomes, the worst of which arguably could take into account a
resurgence of COVID-19 in the second half of the year. Policymakers’ estimates
for the 2020 change in GDP ranged from a low of negative 10% to a high of
negative 4.2%.
Still, to Powell’s point, the “central tendency,”
which reflects the weight of estimates, ranged from negative 7.6% to negative
5.5%, which would not appear to factor a substantial drag from any second wave.
Abrazos,
PD1: Ayer se publicaban datos
macro que reflejaban un repunte en V (es el de más a la derecha…)
El mercado se desmadró…
PD2: lo que me da la gana, es
el símbolo de la libertad…
