Legendary investor Warren Buffett said that the economic consequences of the pandemic are particularly hard on small businesses, and it is still very early to say that the story with COVID-19 is over. New strains that continue to be detected against the background of the Covid mutation carry no less significant threat than those that tormented the world in the first three waves of isolation.
"The economic impact has been this extremely uneven thing where I don't know how many but many hundreds of thousands or millions of small businesses have been hurt in a terrible way, but most of the big, big companies have overwhelmingly have done fine," said CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, in an interview.
After the paralysis of the American economy in March 2020, it has already lost more than $20 trillion, and the losses from the coronavirus pandemic continue. Thousands of small entrepreneurs were forced to close their companies or suspend their activities. Gross domestic product for the 1st quarter of last year fell by 31.4%, which was unprecedented for America after the Great Depression.
However, Buffett is sure that this is not the end. The 90-year-old investor believes that the unpredictability of the further situation with the coronavirus threatens those businessmen and their companies who survived the first three waves with their last strength.
At the same time, there are also some companies that have benefited from the pandemic. And these are business in the field of electronic commerce and car dealers. Buffett noted that due to the closure of factories and the global shortage of semiconductors, automakers, and dealers received record demand for cars, which led to a huge volume of sales and unloading of warehouses accumulated during the pandemic. They buy a car before they even reach the car dealerships.
Buffett also said that the biggest lesson he learned from the pandemic is, how bad can the world be prepared for emergencies that will inevitably happen in the future. "I learned that people don't know as much as they think they know," he said.
According to the latest statistics, more than 600,000 people have died from Covid in the United States alone, and the fight against new strains of coronavirus continues. The Indian variant of Delta coronavirus has already been recorded in 92 countries, including the United States, and most likely in the near future it will become the dominant strain of coronavirus worldwide.
"There'll be another pandemic, we know that. We know there's a nuclear, chemical, biological, and now cyberthreat. Each one of those has terrible possibilities," Buffett said.
As for cyber attacks, they are becoming a real threat to the United States of America. This year, the steady increase in large-scale cyber attacks has directly affected Americans and made logistics and services in the United States difficult. In May, a successful cyber attack on the Colonial Pipeline forced the American company to close about 5,500 miles of the pipeline. It is not for nothing that this problem was discussed during the meeting between Biden and Putin.
Buffett's idea and his view of what is happening are likely clear to everyone. It is another matter what the current government of Joe Biden will do with this, since the stimulating programs that are now working in full force will have to be curtailed in the near future due to the threat of an unprecedented inflationary jump. It is difficult to imagine a real fourth wave of the pandemic, who and how will take care of business.
The material has been provided by InstaForex Company - www.instaforex.com