The coronavirus is going global, and it could bring the world economy to a standstill. An epidemic that began in the depths of China’s Hubei province is spreading rapidly. There are now significant outbreaks from South Korea to Italy and Iran, and the first deaths have been reported in America. The economic fallout could include recessions in the U.S., euro-area and Japan, the slowest growth on record in China, and a total of $2.7 trillion in lost output—equivalent to the entire GDP of the U.K. That’s the most extreme of four scenarios developed by Bloomberg Economics, drawing on the experience in China, the distribution of cases in other countries, estimates of risks to global supply chains, and a large-scale model of the global economy. With so many unknowns surrounding the trajectory of the epidemic, and the response from government and business, forecasters cannot aspire to precision. But these four […]