I’ve lost count of the number of countries in crisis. The world has never seen anything like this before.
As Australia continues to move towards shut-down, it comforting to know we’re not the only ones having to deal with this.
At the end of last week, the Governor of California put the whole state in shutdown. California is something like the 12th biggest economy in the world.
But while it’s nice to have company in a crisis, the economic implications are just down-right scary. The world has never seen such a synchronised king-hit on so many countries at the same time.
I’ve got literally no idea how this is going to play out. We’ve never been here before.
So just quickly, because I’m working on a bunch of crisis-related stuff right now, here’s a pack of charts from Capital Economics tracking the global wibble-wobble.
First up, China, since that’s where it all started.
And the thing to note in China’s charts is that even though they seem to be over the hump virus-wise, the economy is taking a long time to come back to life.
Daily passenger travel dropped with the New Year holidays, but still hasn’t come back.
Cinemas remain closed:
And there’s still a huge number of containers waiting to be off-loaded at China’s ports. Like disaster-level huge:
Next up, Italy, where traffic remains 25% below ‘normal’ levels.
Traffic in Berlin and Madrid is down about 12%…
Diners in open table restaurants in Ireland are down about 80%. It’s 50% in Germany.
Train passenger numbers in Japan are down 60%…
Bangkok airport arrival numbers are quickly going to zero:
Ditto in Singapore:
While in the US, traffic was also crashing, even ahead of recent shutdowns.
Each chart is remarkable in it’s own right. Each country has it’s own headaches. Just like we do.
But all this is happening, all over the world, all at the same time.
It’s enough to make your head spin.
DB.