I'm not sure about that. I'm ready to go to the gym, go out to restaurants, and just yesterday they took the caution tape off of the school playground and lots of kids were there.
I don't think demand will immediately return to 100%, but I think quite a few people are itching to get out and spend money and enjoy life. Maybe not in some areas, but most of the country is probably ready to go.
Here’s one example. Restaurants will likely be operating at 50% capacity or below for the foreseeable future. Their business model does not work at 50% capacity. Many, many jobs are not coming back.
I think this is an argument for lack of money to be spent since a hefty portion of people have lost their jobs and paychecks don't happen instantaneously and unpaid bills probably come first.
Consumer confidence is being eroded more and more every single day, and the savings rate of an American has almost doubled to 13% in the past 2 months. Purchasing power of an average American has most likely decreased somewhat, if not significantly, given the unemployment numbers. All of those things don’t just bounce back like a rubber band when the country is “ready to go”. It will be years before we get back to the GDP numbers we were seeing pre-Covid and that’s probably considering that everything trends upwards from here on out, which is highly doubtful.
