Paralysis is not supposed to be one of the symptoms of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus sweeping the world.
But drastic action by the world’s central banks — the “bazooka” as German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz labelled it, a term quickly adopted by the financial media — has left economic actors stunned and immobilized.
As markets continue to gyrate and tumble there is increasing evidence that even free money, now being offered at nearly zero per cent, is simply not enough to reassure the world facing an inscrutable future.
Evidence of that paralysis came from close to home yesterday.
While the headline from the Canadian Real Estate Association’s monthly release boasted of a resurging property market, far more revealing was what the group’s economists said about the future.
“As providers of the most accurate and timely housing data and statistics, CREA cannot credibly update its quarterly forecast at this time,” said the association in bold type at the top of its data report for February.