Nearly all economic data as reported on a monthly or quarterly basis have so far reflected the era in the US before the economy reacted to the coronavirus. These reactions – from panic-buying of toilet paper to airlines shutting down much of their international and now even domestic routes – were phased into the economy beginning in later February and have now risen to a crescendo. But they’re slow in making their way into the economic data.

We get company by company warnings, and we get the government’s and the Fed’s reaction to the events, but we haven’t seen the impact in the official data yet. The first data to seriously reflect this are the surveys of company executives such as the Purchasing Manager’s Indices for March, out later this month, or the New York Fed’s Empire State Manufacturing index, which was released this morning,

And it’s ugly: The Empire State Manufacturing index of General Business Conditions plunged by 34.4 points, the largest point-drop on record, from a still relatively sanguine level of 12.9 in February, to the level in March of negative -21.5, the lowest since 2009, and right at where it had been in October 2008, following the Lehman bankruptcy in September. And this was just the first reaction related to the impact of Covid-19 mitigation measures…CLICK for complete article