Welcome to the thoughts on the market. I'm Michael Zesus, head of Public Policy Research and Municipal Strategy for Morgan Stanley.

And I'm Melen Zettner, Chief U.S. Economist. And on this special edition of the Podcast podcast we'll be talking about the impact

of the coronavirus on not only the global economy but the US economy and what may

come next as the Fed and policy aim to deliver coordinated stimulus.

It's Wednesday, March 18 at noon, eastern time.

Ellen, I want to get into some of the items left in the toolkit for the Fed and

the US government, but first maybe you could set the stage with the road ahead for the U.S. economy.

What do you think the rest of 2020 could look like?

I tell you the way things feel right now, it's a little difficult to get beyond what they might look like just over the next month or two.

I tell our clients, you know, we just don't know how much economic activity will be squashed from the social distancing measures as those

deep and across the US.

You know, I often get asked, will this look like, will it be a V shape rebound a U shape and L shape and I can tell you at the very least that the the letter

V just isn't in my vocabulary right now I have to go back and think to what I think

the average household in the US would act like

on the back of such a sudden shock

and something that we've not had to deal with before and I just don't think that on day one we jump back in the water.

I think we first walk up to the edge and we stick our toes in the sand and wiggle them around and get them wet a bit and then kind of walk slowly in.

To that and we're looking for a lot of fiscal and monetary policy support.

So Mike, you know, a lot of headlines coming out on what Congress is doing here, is this

going to be a big stimulus package, what can be in it, what's going to get left on the cutting room floor you know what are the key

debates that are going on in Congress right now when they think about what kind of stimulus

we might get yeah I think it's pretty clear at this point that Congress is going for a big stimulus and it seems like with every passing headline they're going bigger and bigger.

...