Covid-19: how bad will it be for the economy?

(the video in one piece can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUUWoN4LKuE)

http://allprofessionalenglish.blogspot.com/2020/04/covid-19-
how-bad-will-it-be-for-economy.html

I Lead-in.

A) Think of your associations with the phrase ‘economic crisis’. Take 2 minutes to
write down your ideas. Compare your list with other students.
B) Why can a crisis happen? What examples of crises (plural form of crisis) in
economy do you remember?
C) How do people’s lives change during crises?

II Vocabulary focus. Match the words and phrases with their definitions. Use
three words or phrases in your sentences.

assets; to sledgehammer; demand; commodity; bubble; to turn red; decline; stock

market; unemployment; outbreak; a bolt from the blue; to crumble; profit; bear market;
liquid; pandemic; deus ex machina

a) to break down completely

b) a time when something unpleasant for example a disease suddenly begins
c) a product
d) amount of product or service that people want
e) a situation in which some people do not have work
f) a disease that affects people across the whole world
g) to strike something very hard and with a lot of force
h) a place where companies sell and buy shares
i) to fall below its starting value (about stock markets)
j) money earned in business
k) property that a company owns
l) that can be quickly sold or converted into cash
m) a time when price of shares is falling and a lot of people are selling them
n) the process of becoming less in amount, strength or importance
o) a (short) period of a very successful economic performance often followed by failure
p) something that appears suddenly and solves all the problems
q) something unusual that happens suddenly
III Match the dates and numbers in the list to make facts about economic crises. Watch
the video and check your answers.

2 years; 2000; 49%; 2007-2009; 10 million; 60%; 1/3; $50

1. The price of a barrel of oil after coronavirus pandemic started = _______

2. Number of unemployment claims in the USA in two weeks =_______
3. The year when of the dot-bubble crisis happened =_______
4. The period during which S&P 500 dropped in the past = _______
5. The rate of the drop in S&P 500 in the past = _______
6. The period of time the financial crisis lasted = _______
7. The rate of the decrease in the economy during 2007 crisis over a year = _______
8. The proportion of the market fall during one month of coronavirus crisis = _______

IV Watch the video and fill in the gaps with the words from the list. There are some
words you don’t need to use.

Pandemic; future; manage; world; investors; economic; models; outbreak; silver; crisis;
years; unemployment; gold; liquid; history; global; month; furniture; markets; stock
markets; depreciation

Around the 1) _______, economies are crumbling. Since the coronavirus 2) _______,
the price of every vital commodity has fallen. We’re seeing a lot of these 3) _______hit.
Coronavirus has oil below $50 a barrel; US demand in China has dropped off substantially.
You’re impacting the demand for copper, iron ore, even 4) _______is going down.
America’s Department of Labour has recorded the highest ever number of new 5)
_______claims in the past two weeks—just under 10 million. Governments had modelled the
impact of a 6) _______on their economies but were in no way prepared. The indication is
that 7) _______activity has been sledgehammered in the course of a couple of weeks. Just
how deep is the 8) _______for the world economy?
Over the past two months, the world’s biggest 9) _______ _______have turned red.
It falls like that because investors suddenly have to recalculate the 10) _______for the
economy and the future for corporate profits and adjust their figures sharply downwards.
And then they tend to sell assets, which are the most 11) _______. Often those are the big
companies in the S&P 500. The S&P 500 had its quickest bear-market decline in 12)
_______.
When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 it took almost two 13) _______for the S&P
500 to drop by 49%. The 2007-09 financial crisis led to a fall of almost 60% in just over a
year. The coronavirus pandemic has already seen the market fall by a third in just one 14)
_______.
This crash has been so quick because it was such a shock. In the financial crisis, there
was actually quite a long lead up. It was a good, long 18 months of bad news. But this is
genuinely a deus ex machina, a bolt from the blue where 15) _______were just not pricing in
the risk of a pandemic. And of course, governments have never in the past imposed the kind
of lockdown on a 16) _______economy that they have this time. So this was not something
people had in their 17) _______.
V Match the words from two columns to make collocations used in the text. Use three
collocations in your sentences.

1. around a) economy
2. coronavirus b) claim
3. vital c) from the blue
4. unemployment d) assets
5. economic e) crisis
6. world f) commodity
7. stock g) outbreak
8. corporate h) economy
9. to sell i) market
10. financial j) lockdown
11. a bolt k) activity
12. impose l) profit
13. global m) the world

VI The images below show different industries. Match the image to the caption.

a) retailing
b) entertainment
c) hospitality
d) car manufacturing
e) agriculture
 VII Watch the video and mark which industries from task VI it discusses. Note
down how these industries are influenced by the current crisis.

VIII Vocabulary focus. Match the words and phrases with their definitions. Use
two words or phrases in your sentences.
capacity; supplier; supply; to resurrect; goods; ripple effect

a) a situation in which one event spreads and influences other situation

b) things for sale
c) amount of things available for use
d) a company or person that provides things people need
e) the maximum number of things contained
f) to bring something back to use
 IX Watch the video and put the sentences in the correct order.

a) Modern industry relies on goods and materials crossing borders.

b) And in the interim, because there’s very little demand for finished products, few
companies are going to want to resurrect that supply chain instantly until they know
that the economy is settled down.
c) Businesses started to look for alternative suppliers but of course, that was a race to try
and find the few that had spare capacity.
d) China is the bedrock of the global supply chain.
e) It’s going to take a very, very long time for them to rebuild their supply chains.
f) But even if a business isn’t directly losing out from people staying at home lockdowns
are having a devastating ripple effect.
g) The problem started in China where the disease started really to be seen in December
and then had a huge impact in January.
h) The coronavirus caused a break in the biggest link in the vast, global, supply chain.

X Vocabulary focus. Match the words and phrases with their definitions. Use two
words or phrases in your sentences.
to rebound; damage; GDP; restriction; recession; recovery; trough

a) loss and harm

b) the period of improvement of economy after problems
c) the period of decline in economic activities
d) to jump back
e) a low turning point or a local minimum of a business cycle
f) the total value of goods and services produced by a country in a year
g) an official limit on something

XI Watch the video and choose the correct option to complete the sentences.

The true extent of the 1) homage/damage/rampage to the world economy will only
start to become clear with the speed and strength of its 2) covered/coveted/recovery. The
big question that 3) economists/economically/mimics are still trying to grapple with is
whether this is what they call a V-shaped recession or a U-shaped 4)
reflection/selection/recession or an L-shaped recession. In a V-shaped recession the
economy suffers a rapid fall but rebounds very quickly as opposed to a longer economic
trough before recovery or 5) long-lost/long-term/long-forgotten recession. Now, the most
encouraging news we’ve had so far is that in China which was the 6) fast/last/first economy
to be hit the latest figures suggest the most hopeful possibility which is that this is a V-
shaped recession. Now, if China can do that, the 7) hopefully/hope/opt is that Europe and
America can do that later on when the lockdowns are lifted. Europeans and Americans are
also being helped by unprecedented 8) atonement/governed/government responses. These
short-term protections might reduce the damage the economy suffers. But this pandemic
could 9) fast/last/lasting a long time. So, the difficult calculation for governments is trading
off the lives of people who will die from the coronavirus versus the 10)
economist/economic/mimic damage to the economy. Year-long lockdowns would cost
America and the euro zone perhaps a third of their GDP. Models looking at America suggest
that ending lockdowns would lessen that damage but would lead to around 1million extra
deaths.
In the last 75 years, since the second world 11) war/warrior/where, we’ve seen
nothing like this. Governments have not reacted on this scale. So although it’s terrible, in a
way it shows our humanity that we want to reduce the number of deaths so much that we’re
willing to put up with all these 12) affliction/restrictions/restrict and we’re willing to
accept a big hit to economic activities.

XII Watch the part of the video in task XI and focus on the types of recessions it
discusses. Choose the correct answers to the questions below .
1) In a _________ there is a longer economic trough before recovery.
A) U-shaped recession B) L-shaped recession C) V-shaped recession
2) _________ is a long-term recession.
A) L-shaped recession B) U-shaped recession C) V-shaped recession
3) In a _________the economy suffers a rapid fall but rebounds very quickly.
A) U-shaped recession B) V-shaped recession C) L-shaped recession

XIII Watch all parts of the video and answer the questions.
1) How has coronavirus outbreak affected stock markets?
2) How does the economic decline resulting from the coronavirus outbreak compare to
the economic crises of the past?
3) What businesses and industries were affected by the current crisis?
4) How does the pandemic affect supply chains?
5) What types or scenarios of economic recessions does the video discuss? What are
the characteristics of each type? What scenario can the current crisis follow
(according to economists’ predictions so far)?

XIV Show what you’ve learnt. Follow the link below. Focus on the words and
expressions (study definitions), match the terms to their definitions, solve the crossword
puzzle, complete the quiz, chase down the correct answer to earn points, unscramble
words and phrases (correct order of letters), type in words to fill in the blanks, test your
knowledge of vocabulary.
https://www.studystack.com/flashcard-3214402

XV OVER TO YOU. Prepare a short (3-minutes) talk on how the Covid-19 pandemic
has affected the economy of your country: what industries are affects, what is happening to
supply and demand?