Moving forward again, this must happen.  The states are finally beginning to relax the stay at home policies and allow businesses to begin to ramp up their openings.  This must happen.

Millions of people are hurting and need to get their incomes re-established.  Millions will perhaps never be the same financially after this.

There are so many aspects of our economy that will be dramatically changed for many years that will negatively impact millions of workers.  Airlines will probably never fully recover due to companies utilizing online services to conduct conferences whereas before the virus; managers and executives would fly to locations to meet in person.  What is the ripple effect of that?  Well, less business travel means fewer rental cars rented, fewer hotel rooms that will be rented, and fewer restaurant business meals being purchased and lastly fewer satellite parking spots will be needed near the airports.  I could keep going but you get the point.

Now that companies have learned that employees can work from home and still be productive, look for that trend to continue long after the virus is no longer a threat.  This is certainly be good for the environment and will reduce the impact future viruses will have on the workplace but it will negatively impact the oil and gas industry.

Some will applaud this, but many will suffer from this because like them or not, oil and gas companies invest billions of dollars in the economy in their search for more reserves and in building facilities to refine and produce petrochemicals.  The loss of this capital investment will be tremendous.  This will result in the loss of millions of high paying jobs both white collar and blue collar.

Places that are heavily dependent on tourism and on air travel as the primary means to travel there will be hurt post virus.  Places like Las Vegas, Hawaii, many Mexican resorts, and many of the Caribbean islands all will be negatively impacted.  I predict many people will be more likely to take shorter trips and drive versus having to fly.  Some will still fly but there will be many that won’t.

I don’t think experts really understand how deep this virus has damaged the world’s economies.  I also don’t think they understand the length of time it will take to get back to 85% of where we were.

President Trump has to be the optimist.  He has to be the positive force where there is so much negative.  I admire him for this and I hope he is right and the economy rebounds quickly.  I see headwinds that will make this possibility somewhat remote but we still must begin the process of starting.  We must move forward and win this war.