Welcome to Axis Proerata, where we normally take 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics, but today we are doing a special five-part series on the coronavirus pandemic, which is changing our economy, our politics, and our way of life.

I'm D. Mac. This particular episode is focused on how COVID-19 is impacting the markets, and I am pleased

to be joined by Axios Markets editor Dionne Rubo.

And let's start a little bit remedially here.

There's been lots of talk about the possibility of a recession.

For those who don't quite understand it, technically what is a recession?

Technically a recession means back-to-back quarters of negative economic growth.

U.S. has one of those since the great recession in 2008.

Floyd's a big deal.

Usually, we grow around 2% a quarter.

Going negative means a lot of money.

It's not coming in.

Are there other countries, other developed kind of countries we kind of compare ourselves

to that are already in recession?

There's obviously was global growth, but there's been some pullback, correct, in certain places? Yeah, absolutely. Right now, the short list

off the top of my head, Germany, UK, Switzerland, very likely Mexico, Brazil as well, South Africa.

So, Dan, can we talk a little bit and get a little kind of finance nerdy here. The Fed has done a lot in the past week.

Actually, a little over a week ago, they did an emergency rate cut for the first time in a very long time.

And then this week basically did something new. Explain a little bit about what they did in terms of the repo market and why that matters.

So the Fed has flooded the repo market actually since September of last year. They've put in something

like a trillion and a half, $2 trillion. This week they announced another $1.5 trillion to finance

these repo market injections. Basically, just think of it as moving cash in the system to make sure

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