Mounting Prospects for an Unprecedented Emerging Market Debt Crisis

As the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the global economy, it seems that this unfolding health and social crisis will be with us until we have both an effective treatment and a vaccine. As governments battle the consequences of this disease, Winston Chur- chill’s words from 1942 echo, “This is not the end, it is not the beginning of the end. It is perhaps the end of the beginning.” Search for a vaccine is engaging many of the smartest scientists from Oxford to Harvard to laboratories worldwide. Teams are rushing to test possible solutions; perhaps we will have a breakthrough, but it will take time. The next 12 months are critical in the race to find both an effective vaccine and treatment. As the coronavirus continues to mutate, scientists will be challenged by its changing nature. Advances in current scientific research give hope that a targeted therapeutic intervention may be in sight. Unfortunately, this pandemic and its economic fallout will cause the greatest emerging market financial crisis in memory.