“The US recession is almost over after being at its worst in the past couple of months”, says Thomas Barkin, the president of Bank of Richmond. He further elaborated that the recession that started on 15th of March affected millions of people throughout the country finally came to an end in June-July.
This was one of the most haunting times that the US economy has ever experienced as the economy shrunk by an annual rate of 31.7% in the 2nd quarter. However, Thomas, along with the other economists, is hopeful that the economy would recover if things don’t go bad any further.
The president of the St. Louis Fed, James Bullard, expects the economy to recover by the end of the year 2020. Whereas, it would take some time to fully recover and that could be anytime around the end of the year 2021.
James believes that if they don’t face an unfortunate event then nothing can stop the US from being back to the great economy it had been.
Barkin refers to the situation of the economy as “out of the hospital” which means that it is out of the critical state but there are still chances of things going south.
As the government decided to open the country, a great growth rate has been witnessed. According to Thomas, the main problem the country is facing at the moment is unemployment.
In March 2020, it is estimated that around 701,000 people lost their jobs. Some even predict that the situation could get as worst as 10 to 20 million people being unemployed. Barkin agrees with this and says that numbers like this are quite possible.
While talking to a reporter, he said that a lot of businesses are devastated by the situation and even the viable ones are being closed with business debts rising.
There is a lot of uncertainty regarding the situation overall and no one knows for sure how and when all this would be over. But people are really happy that the situation is under control as they wait for a solution to end this.
Thomas Barkin claims that the Bank has done a lot for the people and will continue to do so. He seems quite hopeful about the next year and is excited to see how the economy recovers.
