[tjpaudio]

Things are going to be bad until people can go back to work, that much is certain. Whether there is a speedy bounce back after things are back to normal, or if we experience economic stagnation, is anyones guess. The metric to watch is m2, the federal reserve's measure of the velocity of money. Basically, a healthy economy in our system is one where money changes hands quickly. Saving money is bad for the economy, which is why the federal reserve has the mandate of maintaining steady positive inflation. Unfortunately, this availability of this measure is lagged a month or two. It could be that when people go back to work, they go on a spending spree after being cooped up for months, or it could be that pandemic scares people into being more fiscally conservative.

[rodiger]

M2 is a measure of money supply. To get velocity you also need nominal GDP. M2 says nothing about velocity without taking into account the inevitable GDP changes. If you're looking for a googlable metric to look for, M2V is the Fed's calculated velocity of M2.