Eric Lascelles, Chief Economist at RBC Global Asset Management, comments on the economic situation and prospects of a global recession

"To deploy an imperfect metaphor, governments have opted to put their countries into an induced coma to minimize the death toll, but with the side-effect of considerable economic and financial market damage.

"We have been forced to downgrade our growth forecast yet again. We're now forecasting not just recession, but the deepest peak-to-trough decline in recent memory.

"Fortunately, the trough is not likely to last for especially long. A further silver lining is that policymakers have now introduced truly extraordinary amounts of monetary and fiscal stimulus. This is key for preventing a temporary and artificial supply-led shock from turning into an enduring demand-side one.

"For those investors with the luxury of a longer term investment horizon, risk assets such as equities and credit are now quite cheap by historical standards."

"Our US economic scenarios vary quite significantly. A shallow depth paired with a short duration would even allow the US economy to keep growing in 2020 (+1.0 percent).

"Conversely, a deep trough paired with a long duration might translate into a nearly unfathomable decline (-16.1 percent). The level of uncertainty is very high.

"Most likely are more moderate assumptions such as a medium depth and medium duration that would result in a 2.8 percent decline in 2020 GDP (gross domestic product). Even this is a very significant decline, slightly worse than 2009 and the largest annual drop since 1946. Disaggregated into quarterly terms, the second quarter 2020 decline may well prove the largest on record.

"To be clear, this is not a forecast of a depression. Depressions refer to a deep economic decline that then persists for many years. While this could well meet the depth definition, it is less likely to meet the duration definition to the extent that pandemics do not usually last for many years and much of the economic pain is being artificially induced by quarantining rather than something more fundamentally wrong with the structure of the economy.

"Europe and Canada may suffer slightly more than the US, because of the severity of the disease in Europe and the additional blow of low oil prices in Canada."

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Eric Lascelles, Chief Economist at RBC Global Asset Management, comments on the economic situation and prospects of a global recession

"To deploy an imperfect metaphor, governments have opted to put their countries into an induced coma to minimize the death toll, but with the side-effect of considerable economic and financial market damage.

"We have been forced to downgrade our growth forecast yet again. We're now forecasting not just recession, but the deepest peak-to-trough decline in recent memory.

"Fortunately, the trough is not likely to last for especially long. A further silver lining is that policymakers have now introduced truly extraordinary amounts of monetary and fiscal stimulus. This is key for preventing a temporary and artificial supply-led shock from turning into an enduring demand-side one.

"For those investors with the luxury of a longer term investment horizon, risk assets such as equities and credit are now quite cheap by historical standards."

"Our US economic scenarios vary quite significantly. A shallow depth paired with a short duration would even allow the US economy to keep growing in 2020 (+1.0 percent).

"Conversely, a deep trough paired with a long duration might translate into a nearly unfathomable decline (-16.1 percent). The level of uncertainty is very high.

"Most likely are more moderate assumptions such as a medium depth and medium duration that would result in a 2.8 percent decline in 2020 GDP (gross domestic product). Even this is a very significant decline, slightly worse than 2009 and the largest annual drop since 1946. Disaggregated into quarterly terms, the second quarter 2020 decline may well prove the largest on record.

"To be clear, this is not a forecast of a depression. Depressions refer to a deep economic decline that then persists for many years. While this could well meet the depth definition, it is less likely to meet the duration definition to the extent that pandemics do not usually last for many years and much of the economic pain is being artificially induced by quarantining rather than something more fundamentally wrong with the structure of the economy.

"Europe and Canada may suffer slightly more than the US, because of the severity of the disease in Europe and the additional blow of low oil prices in Canada."