When you sit and view this.....groceries up and running, but the bulk of what you'd expect in the landscape? Shut down. Furniture stores, shoe shops, tattoo artists, barber shops, tire shops, clothing stores, etc.....all shut down.
My local post office is open, but the lady only allows two people into the building at a time. The optical shop? Closed. The dentist in the village? Only open for emergencies. The vet? She has four chairs out in front of the door.....where you deliver the cat box to the clerk, and you stay outside.
The system built? It was not engineered to have a four-month shut-down. Just the mere suggestion that this would continue on through the end of summer? I can't see it working that way.
Nightly, both public TV and private TV networks.....continue a theme of the Coronavirus, and pepping up people to feel positive about the leadership, the efforts being accomplished, and to just stay home.
With warmer weather approaching.....virtually no one is going to stay home. But as you look around....pools are shut down....bowling ally's are not functional, and the simple act of going to your local bar to watch a soccer game on his big-screen TV? That's out.
Companies giving up and putting on short-work? Thats already happening, and some are discussing letting people go. I could see 30-percent unemployment by late June.
Bluntly.....the idea of this continuing for another three months? No, I can't see this as the workable solution. People have mortgages and car payments to make. To even suggest that the government would cover all of these expenses for 90 days? It would involve a heck of a lot of debt to occur.
The death cycle? The news people admitted from the 200-odd deaths so far in Germany....the average age is 81 years old.
Manpower shortages coming shortly for the retiree homes in Germany? There's been several news pieces done in the last week where this topic got brought up. A lot of the in-house employees were non-Germans, and they've left for their home-country. There's fear over the virus, and how things might go.
So my forecast:
1. A week or two after Easter....the government will suggest for people to go back to some normal work schedule.
2. The airports? I would suggest they stay shutdown until the end of May. Border-crossing efforts? Same way....end of May..
3. Restarting everything? I don't see the economy going back to 100-percent. I also doubt that unemployment is normal for the remainder of 2020....with the end of the year still around 8 to 10 percent.
4. It's not a bad period ahead....but if you were expecting a near-to-2019 era....it won't fit.
3 comments:
I wonder how long until all the free market, pro capitalism business owners start lining up for handouts? Shades of 2008, where the wealthy get to profit from the market tanking and from it rebounding later.
The system has to subside or decrease the week after Easter. If they carry this on, for the whole month of April and May....I'd expect 50-percent of business operations in Germany to go into collapse (requiring cash infusion). These medium-sized companies (like the heating repair shops, vacation sales, catering companies, river cruise ships, etc)....have very limited assets to be shut-down for more than six weeks.
If you were doing a house expansion project and needing city approval....go test your local bureaucrats here in Germany....most are shut down, and the projects will linger for weeks, if not months.
Soccer clubs are the same way...several of them are marginally surviving if the rest of the season is cancelled or stamped 'no-fan-entry'. They will ask for money as well.
The system, across the entire landscape....simply wasn't made for this type of disaster. A flood or earthquake leads to problems and recovery, because you know the schedule and how things run. This is different....there is no schedule....there is no path to recovery unless you just go back to work and count on some 'miracle-drugs' to achieve a 'balance' on things.
I should add this little note....tax revenue being collected via VAT or income taxes for 2020? It's likely to be in the 50 to 60 percent range of 2019. Go figure how the revenue bucket would function with that big of a loss on the year, if the trend continues. No one is buying cars right now....zero trips planned for 2020...and big-ticket items for the living room or kitchen? Zeroed-out.
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