The second quarter of 2020 was the mother of all economic contractions. Real GDP shrank at a 31.7% annual rate, the largest drop for any quarter since the Great Depression.

The Federal Reserve was already holding short-term interest rates near zero. What today's meeting made clear was how determined the Fed is to hold them there for at least the next few years and perhaps well into the current decade.

As we near the end of the third quarter, key economic reports will be released that will influence our forecast for third quarter real Gross Domestic Product. It will be a very strong quarter.

When government forces businesses to close (even if it is for a pandemic), it's a "taking" in the legal sense. And we can think about $3 trillion in extra federal spending as "just compensation" to businesses and workers for that taking. Basically, we decided to borrow from future generations in an attempt to stop a virus and save the economy.

At the end of 2019 we made the same exact forecast for the end of 2020 — the strangest year in our lifetimes, and it's not even over. Compared to most analysts, this was a very bullish call. And then, when the market hit a pre-COVID19 peak of 3386 in mid-February, if anything we looked not bullish enough.

The US economy got crushed in the second quarter, with the worst decline in real GDP for any quarter since the Great Depression. However, the long road to recovery has started and, for now, we're penciling in real GDP growth at a 20% annual rate for the third quarter. Of all the parts of the US economy that have weathered the COVID-19 storm, none has been as resilient as the housing market.

Election Day is eleven weeks from tomorrow. In political time, this is an eternity. However, with the White House, about one-third of the Senate, and the entire House of Representatives on the ballot, this election is significant. Particularly because the two presidential candidates have such stark differences in policy perspectives, especially with respect to taxes.

It's going to take years for the US economy to fully heal from the economic disaster brought about by COVID-19 and the government-mandated shutdowns which continue to limit economic activity across the country.

These days, pretty much everything is hyper-political, including death rates from disease, wearing masks, opening schools, whether some demonstrations are "mostly peaceful" or "violent," and now GDP.

Right now, it looks like the US economy shrank at a 35% annual rate in Q2. To put that in perspective, the worst quarter we've ever had since the military wind-down immediately following World War II was -10% in the first quarter of 1958, when, not by coincidence, the US was hit by an Asian flu. This is going to shatter that record by multiples and will likely be the worst since the Great Depression.

"There is no such thing as a free lunch." It's been attributed to many different people, Milton Friedman and Robert Heinlein, among others. Regardless of who said it, we think it's one of the most basic economic truths.

It's time to think about something other than COVID, statues, the election, and defunding the police. How about higher education? Specifically, student loans and grants.

Not since the 1960s and 70s has the United States experienced social upheaval like it is experiencing today. We have protests (both peaceful and otherwise), and a massively divided political landscape. On top of that, we have a virus that is spreading across the country, creating fear and an acceptance of economic shutdowns.

In the aftermath of recent strong gains in jobs, some analysts have been latching onto pandemic-related classification errors to claim the headline unemployment rate is at best distorted to show an overly optimistic picture of the labor market, and at worst a downright lie to try and manipulate public perceptions.

A resurgence of new Coronavirus cases around the country has created uncertainty for investors. Stock markets fell last week, not because of the virus, but because investors fear another round of economy-killing, government-mandated lockdowns. We don't expect that to happen, but when the government is involved, risks are definitely higher.

Turning off the global economic light-switch, and then turning it partially back on, has sent shockwaves through economic data that, while anticipated, have been jaw-dropping in both directions.

The one key takeaway from last week's Fed meeting is that monetary policymakers are set to keep short-term interest rates near zero for as far as the eye can see. Not forever, but at least until 2023. Keep this in mind in the week ahead, as we get more reports confirming the economic recovery started back in May.

The most important takeaway from today's Fed meeting is that policymakers don't expect to raise short-term interest rates until at least 2023.

The recession that started in March is the sharpest downturn since the Great Depression. As it turns out, it was also the shortest.

A full recovery from the COVID-19/Shutdown Crisis is going to take a long time. We don't anticipate reaching a new peak for real GDP until the end of 2021; we don't anticipate a 4% unemployment rate until 2024.

This year's experiment with government-imposed lockdowns has been a fiasco. We should have been focused on sealing-off nursing homes and limiting mass indoor events, while the vast majority of businesses that were shutdown could have kept operating, with natural social distancing.

The coronavirus kills, everyone knows it. But this isn't the first deadly virus the world has seen, so what happened? Why did we react the way we did? One answer is that this is the first social media pandemic. News and narratives travel in real-time right into our hands.

The largest federal budget deficit since World War II came back in 2009, as slower growth and increased government spending during the subprime-mortgage financial panic pushed the deficit to 9.8% of GDP. This year's the budget deficit will, quite simply, blow that record out of the water.

In December 2018 with the S&P 500 at 2,500, we forecast it would hit 3,100 by the end of 2019 and then pushed our forecast to 3,250 as stocks soared. The S&P 500 rose 28.9% in 2019 and hit that revised target on the first day of trading in 2020.

The Federal Reserve has been extremely aggressive since the Coronavirus and related shutdowns hit the US economy and made it clear today that it will continue to be so until the US economy has gotten back on its feet.

Before the Coronavirus, the US economy was cruising for what looked like 3% annualized growth in real GDP in the first quarter. But the effects of both natural social distancing and government-mandated lockdowns crushed economic growth in March.

With each passing week, the economic damage wrought by the Coronavirus and the resulting shutdowns grows larger. It's not just businesses, both small to large, feeling the pain. Educational institutions, hospitals, churches, not-for-profits, and state and local governments are all finding it hard to remain financially viable.

Normally, we're not big fans of enhanced unemployment benefits. But the current severe economic contraction brought about by the Coronavirus and the government-mandated shutdowns of businesses meant to stop the disease is a completely different animal from a normal recession.

Doctors think differently than economists. They put patients with a potential for brain damage in an artificial coma to stop swelling, and when it stops, they bring them out. This fits with the Hippocratic Oath all doctors take, which states "First, do no harm." The idea is to "limit" damage and then "restart" a more normal body with fewer problems.

In order to be better prepared in the future, we need a vibrant private sector, not a permanent expansion in government.

The government-mandated shutdown of business, and the massive drop in economic activity it is causing, may actually do more harm to the United States than the coronavirus itself. Early estimates suggest the U.S. economy will contract at a staggering 20% annualized rate in the second quarter, and the number may move even higher.

Due to fears about the Coronavirus – more specifically, the forceful government measures designed to halt its spread, the US is on the front edge of the sharpest decline in economic activity since the Great Depression.

Back in July 2008, then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said he wanted a "bazooka" to deal with financial threats to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Paulson wanted Congress to give him an unlimited credit line for these enterprises. This time around, it's the Federal Reserve firing a bazooka at the Coronavirus, with more possibly to come.

Coverage around the virus has been almost exclusively negative, as experts extrapolate worst case scenarios to spur action. It should come as little surprise then, that fear of a recession has moved to the forefront of many minds. At times like these, we think it's crucial to look at the data and note some positive developments that aren't getting as much media coverage.

No one knows with any real certainty how much, or for how long, the Coronavirus will impact the US economy. What we do know is that it will have an impact. And, after data releases of recent weeks, we also know that the US economy was in very good shape before it hit.

By the time you read this, the Fed may already have cut rates. That is the situation we find ourselves in given the recent correction in equities, which were at a record high only eight trading days ago but were down 12.8% from that peak as of the market close on Friday.

Monday, fear over the Coronavirus finally gripped investors, as both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 index fell over 3% - the largest daily declines in two years. These drops wiped out all the gains for the year.

One of the worst bipartisan policy decisions in the past generation was the aggressive government push in the 1990s and 2000s to promote homeownership, beyond what the free market could handle. Policymakers encouraged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to gobble up lots of subprime debt, in turn boosting lending to borrowers who couldn't handle their loans.

Thirty years ago, many in the US were in fear that a rising power in Asia was on the verge of eclipsing the US. Now it's China, back then it was Japan.

In January, US payrolls expanded by 225,000, not only beating the consensus forecast, but also forecasts from every single economics group. Since January 2019 (12 months ago), both payrolls and civilian employment – an alternative measure of jobs that includes small-business start-ups – are up 2.1 million.

Fears about the coronavirus knocked down equities last week, while a flight to safety brought the yield on the 10-year Treasury down to 1.51% at the Friday close versus 1.69% the week prior and 1.92% at the end of 2019.

The first Federal Reserve statement of the new decade proved one of the most uneventful in years, with virtually no change from the December outlook that suggested rates will stand pat in the year ahead.

The Federal Reserve is set to make its first policy statement of the year on Wednesday, so this is as good a time as any to reiterate our view that the Fed is likely to keep short-term interest rates steady through 2020 and, while pressures will build, the Fed seems content to hold them steady next year, as well.

Back in mid-November, the highly respected GDP forecasting model from the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank (also known as "GDP Now"), estimated that real GDP would only grow at a 0.3% annual rate in the fourth quarter, which, if accurate, would have been the slowest growth for any quarter since 2015. At the time, we were forecasting economic growth at a 3.0% rate.

The US economy is not in an economic boom, but growth has been consistently faster than during the Plow Horse phase from mid-2009 through the end of 2016. Real GDP has grown at a 2.6% annual rate since the start of 2017 versus 2.2% beforehand.

The longest economic recovery on record continues, with January being the 128th consecutive month of growth. The first seven years, from mid-2009 through 2016 saw average real GDP growth of 2.2%. Since the start of 2017, US real GDP growth accelerated, to an average annual growth rate of 2.6%, while the unemployment rate now stands at the lowest level in 50 years (and is likely headed lower).

The current expansion won't last forever. But we don't see it ending anytime soon.

The Bible story of the virgin birth is at the center of much of the holiday cheer this time of year. The book of Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem because Caesar Augustus decreed a census should be taken. Mary gave birth after arriving in Bethlehem and placed baby Jesus in a manger because there was "no room for them in the inn."

A year ago, we projected the S&P 500 would hit 3100 at the end of 2019. In spite of the swoon in equities in the fourth quarter of last year, we didn't see a recession coming and our model for estimating fair value for the stock market was screaming BUY.

No one expected the Federal Reserve to change short-term rates today and no change was made. Meanwhile, the Fed made no significant changes to its policy statement and the statement was unanimous.