[gdubs]

As others have said, this is largely a guessing game right now. How swiftly and how boldly governments act is going to determine a lot. In 2008 you had people like Paulson and Bernanke who studied the Great Depression and desperately wanted to avoid the mistakes of the past. They saw those mistakes largely as a failure to act quickly. I’m not an economist, but in my humble opinion what we need is cash in the hands of working people who are losing work at an alarming pace. What I’m seeing is too much feet-dragging, means-testing, and timidity. This is a situation where every second counts, so for the best sense of how this all resolved, once again, pay close attention to how swiftly and how boldly governments act to provide stimulus to help people weather the next 18 months.

[kevindong]

Just giving out cash isn't going to fix the problem. It is however one required part of the solution to prevent the situation from spiraling as hard as it otherwise would.

The crux of the issue is that economic activity is severely hampered due to the paralyzing fear of the coronavirus. Even if the government pays out benefits as though everyone remained employed as they were a few months ago, that's not truly economically productive activity. It's an economically-neutral but socially-positive action.

Economic value is generated when people exchange goods (in a better example to reflect modern life, money for goods and vice versa) such that every party is better off. Shuttered businesses prevent this value generation. I live in NYC and most non-food/beverage stores are closed.