Unlike the last recession, weak banks and over-leveraged homes aren’t at the heart of the present economic disaster. A dozen years after the previous crisis, lenders are far stronger and no-doc home loans are history. But housing still will wreak collateral damage on the economy, warns Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics. As many as 30% of Americans with home loans, or some 15 million households, could default if the nation’s economy remains closed up through the summer, he...

To access this premium content, please sign up for a free account!

Activist investor Bill Ackman almost bailed out of the capital markets in the face of stocks’ coronavirus-driven rout, but he chucked that idea to make a savvy bearish bond-based bet on the slide—a move that bagged him a $2.6 billion profit. Initially, fear over the baleful impact of COVID-19 led him to consider, “for the first time ever, liquidating the portfolio in its entirety because we believed it was likely that markets would decline materially,” Ackman wrote in a letter to investors in...

Big surprise, not: Corporate earnings per share (EPS) for this year are expected to be lousy. But how lousy? Try negative 8.3% for the S&P 500 for all of 2020, according to S&P Capital IQ’s consensus of analysts. When you look at recent history, that looks benign. In 2008, the worst year of the Great Recession, EPS tumbled by 77.5%. The growth—or collapse—of the current economy, of course, is key to what earnings will do up ahead. The gloomier estimates have gross domestic product (GDP) for...

Canny moves on the No. 4 economic power’s business structure, political situation, and efforts fighting the virus should form the basis for a rebound.