italy has reported nearly 500 extra deaths from coronavirus, the highest—one—day toll of any nation. it brings the country's total to nearly 3,000. more than a third of all coronavirus fatalities now originate from the country. world markets are continuing their downward spiral. in new york, the dow finished more than 6% down. tokyo opened higher on thursday, but both the hang seng and the market in shanghai have continued the negative trend. the european central bank has announced an $820 billion emergency package, but analysts are warning the virus could send the world economy into recession. america has ramped up its response to the coronavirus. president trump has closed his country's border with canada and invoked a wartime law to increase supplies of vital equipment to fight what he's called the invisible enemy.

its about 4:30am and you're up to date with the headlines. now on bbc news, it's hardtalk with stephen sackur. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. leaders around the world have adopted the language of war to capture the scale of the threat posed by coronavirus. but are they deploying the right weaponry? notjust to protect public health, but to prevent a worldwide economic depression. my guest is laurence boone, chief economist at the global economic forum, the oecd. will we get the dramatic, co—ordinated emergency intervention needed to stave off economic disaster?

laurence boone in paris, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. thanks for the invitation. well, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. of course, you're in paris. your own president, president macron, talks about a war. has country in the world being engaged in a war against coronavirus. do you see that actions are matching the words when it comes to trying to say that the world economy? there are actually three fronts on which we have two fight this battle. one is health, and the other

is economics, financial and social. with health, i think there could be more cooperation with the who, because at the moment, whether it's about data collection, provision of supplies, equipment and testing, there seems to be a little lack of co—ordination. 0n economic and finance, we are actually seeing a lot happening. many governments are putting in place measures to address their healthcare system, but also people to make sure they can support people during this crisis as well as making sure firms do not go under with the hardship that is going on at the moment. but there is this question of urgency, because you talk about individuals, businesses, the fact is that on both levels, corporate and individual, people are running out of money. while leaders are talking big in

terms of their responses, is it happening quickly enough? economics and finance, as you rightly put it, most countries are extending options and talking about even writing checks to households who do not have employment insurance. there may be some left, some people who are more vulnerable and still need more support, but i think not a lot really is being done and in france there is equally many measures, you have first tax and charges suspension, vat reduction in some countries, social contribution and taxes on wages being postponed, and also central banks making sure that banks have the liquidity which is necessary for firms to keep afloat, and the same with the credit that they have to repay, there is also suspension and mediation, so again i think on this front, quite

a lot is being done. we will go through some of the detailed responses, the way in which governments are using fiscal policy in ways which we haven't been since the financial crash of 2008, and in some cases much further even than that, but before we go into the detail, just one point for you — you say plenty is being done on the financial and economic front, but the markets are still in a state of panic. we see plungers of five or six or even up to 10% in markets across the world on a daily basis. some people are saying that that level of panic, that level of volatility is so damaging that there may be, in the short—run, a case for suspending market operations for days, maybe even weeks. what do you think of that? regarding market suspension, as i'm sure you know, it happened once in the us.

the stock market was closed for a week in the wake of 9/11, so we know this may happen. it's obviously not desirable because it's complicating matters a little, but there has been talks and we know it has happened. would you favour it? i mean, you're a very experienced economist and a wonder at times if you think the way in which the markets work and of course short sellers are at work in many of the major markets, maybe that actually exaggerates the amount of damage being done to corporate life? actually, central banks, as you know, have deployed also a lot of measures, and what we are observing is central banks are becoming... have been super efficient at targeting a segment of the market that is not functioning properly because of this

of this uncertainty we are describing. for example, you had the us yesterday really intervening on the deposit certificate side of the market, which is, as you know, funding firms in the short—term, and that sort of aggregated and really corrected some of the distortion we were seeing there. so for the time being, addressing this market distortion, temporary suspension when things are moving too fast is probably wise, and then we can consider tougher measures. all right. you're a global economic research centre and forum, where do you see the biggest weaknesses and problems going forward? china appears, and let us not predict too much, but china appears to have some sort of significant control now over new cases of coronavirus, over the spread, whereas there is great concern that in the united states, for example, partly because of the nature of the system there, the balance between federal

and state agencies, the lack of a social safety net, the lack of a socialised healthcare service, there is a fear that the united states could become the biggest problem in the coronavirus crisis. what is your analysis? you point the finger exactly on one of the key issues which is that the way this is being addressed varies a lot depending on the region. it is very sequential. and sometimes, governments wait and little too long until they see an increase in cases before acting. so again, i think that is why it is super important that they start co—ordinating on what's the best approach, what's the best containment measure, what's the best about travel bans and borders. so which countries are you most concerned about right now?

when you look at the nature of their response? i think you rightly pointed out the countries that do not have usual safety net, automatic stabilisers, unemployment insurance system and so on, because they have to go an extra mile in doing that. you are suggesting the united states has a systemic problem? i am not suggesting that, because they have actually moved ahead very forcefully. as you know, they came out yesterday with very big numbers. they're even considering, which is what one should do when there is a restricted safety net, writing checks to people to make sure that they will receive something and can go through the crisis with some income. why do you think that we're not seeing the level of global

co—ordination at leader level in this crisis that we saw, for example, after the financial crash of 2008 and the way the g20 leadership group responded. we're not seeing that this time. if my quote to you the former uk foreign secretary david miliband, he says, "i'm afraid it speaks to the age that we are living in. there is very little international co—ordination. each country is doing its own thing, fighting for itself, and that heightens the danger." we shouldn't be that negative, there is some co—ordination stopping we shouldn't be that negative, there is some co—ordination. the g7 has issued a very forceful communique, and that was not an easy thing in the circumstances, and that brings me... i've got to stop you, laurence, because you are clearly a natural—born optimist, but donald trump called this the chinese virus the other day. he closed flights from europe

without even telling the europeans. you can hardly argue to me that we are seeing successful international co—ordination. he said that before he finally moved to sign the g7 communique, so you may see there a glimpse of hope. but more to the point, i think that you are right that this is also the sign of times. we have had trade tension, pressure on militarism, difficult international dialogue, and this is naturally reflecting in the fact that they have to do an extra mail and it is not as "natural" as it was in 2008 and 2009 to work together and act in a co—ordinated manner, but you say i'm an optimist, the fact that we have seen something with the g7, i think is a sign that this might be changing slightly in regard of the magnitude of the crisis we are getting across. all right. let's talk magnitude

and let's not be optimist or pessimist but realists. i'm very mindful that just a few days ago, i believe it was march 2nd, you at the 0ecd issued your latest global economic assessment, and you took on board the dangers presented by coronavirus, and you said if it intensifies and is extensive across the world, it could cut global growth to roughly 1.5% this year. but even nowjust these few weeks later that looks absurdly unrealistic. are you now prepared to tell me that you think there is going to be a global recession as a result of what we're seeing, and as martin wolf, the esteemed ft commentator says, in all likelihood, a global depression. if you think about this downside scenario, what do we have in their when it said it is going to cut global growth by half.

we have the northern hemisphere, all 0ecd countries, the us, canada, and in the north and some asian pacific countries, putting in place the same containment measures as what we have seen an china, so i think they depict pretty well the situation we are in today. but first of all, laurence, that is not happening. i am speaking to you from the uk, people are not restricted in their travel by law. they are advised to do certain things and not do other things, but there isn't the draconian sort of imposition of controls that we've seen in other european countries, so it's a mixed bag. and in terms of that mixed bag, and let's not forget what you've already said about america, the idea that a recession can be avoided now looks completely unrealistic. what we are doing at the 0ecd with all the economists that are being there is monitoring underground, day—by—day, what is happening,

and what i mean by that is we are looking at sector by sector — what's closed? what's working? how many people have stopped working? i will give you an example — tourism, globally, that is nearly 320 millionjobs. it is nearly 10% of the workforce and they are nearly all not working today, so there is a lot of uncertainty, we are trying to assess how things are going, and i think we need to start really looking at what is happening country by country, which is why, what they have given you as a framework, but when we look more deeply into this, which is what we are doing now, then we see probably that yes, there is a higher risk of going further down than what we have seen so far. what about that word depression, prolonged recession, and economic slump? some are saying this could be post— second world war the most damaging period for the world economy that have seen. would you say that and are

you beginning to feel that yourself? so it's definitely the biggest crisis and the most uncertain one as well that we have come across because that's the one on which we have less control, right? it's a virus. it's not liquidity. sure. so this effectively means that it could be a very, very big crisis. that being said, i think the compass for us should be to try and have scenarios depending on how the virus epidemic evolves. if we are confined for a couple of months and we find a vaccine and then it's gone, you are going to accuse me again of erring on the optimistic side but there are lots of scenarios and it could be the virus clearly goes away but comes back in the winter or that we struggle to actually eradicate it until we find orjust reduce it until we find a vaccine and this will open the door to a variety of economic scenarios on which i don't think anybody today can have any certainty.

right. what we do know, and you've already alluded to it, is that governments around the world are now pumping vast amounts of cash into their economies to bail out businesses, support and prop up businesses and indeed to hand cash to individuals whether it be the americans planning to write a check to every individual american family whether it's mr macron, the scandinavians offering extended sick pay and pay for those of been laid off their work. there are all sorts of different ways of putting cash into the economy but the bottom line is, it's going to increase indebtedness and i just wonder

whether you believe, at the end of all of this, whether we are talking about public state debt or individual debt, there is going to be a sort of accounting for this, there is going to be a profound debt problem at the end of all of this. so it's true, the amount being injected in the economy are very large and unprecedented, close of perhaps to what we have seen during the financial crisis but i think it's necessary to prevent even bigger debts. if you don't mind, let me give you a sentence on this. what is happening at the moment, governments, policymakers are trying to do everything to buffer the shock, to prevent the deep economy going down to far to what they are doing is keeping afloat, if you wish, putting asleep part of the economic activity, compensating people for that so that you can awake the economy when the virus is going and containment measures are going and by doing that, we will recover more quickly,

and with very low interest rates we should be able to tackle part of this issue. if on the other hand we were letting the economy run its course and closing down, firms going bankrupt and people getting out of money, then not only the recession of the crisis would be worse but we would have even bigger debt issues at the end of this period. right, we've already said, markets aren't convinced that even the emergency measures taken thus far are going to work and there is a great deal of uncertainty. itjust seems to me we're running out economic levers. interest rates have been reduced to virtually only the us and the uk and elsewhere, so monetary policy has run out of ammunition. we are pumping money into the world economy as you've just said, it keeps people afloat, it sort of anaesthetises the problem

to a certain extent but it isn't really working on the problem is in the long run, we are sowing the seeds for perhaps an inflationary crisis period for an economy that is becoming deeply dysfunctional. so certainly we have to hope that this doesn't last for two years or too long in any case but there is one thing i should say. the first one is, in terms of monetary policy, the central banks‘ balance sheet is limited. there is always a way for them to pump liquidity into an economy and the way they do it is the interest from one country to be another because they have different levers. that is something to keep in mind. they have shown before that they can do whatever is necessary in the crisis, and they will show it again. let's think about the economic

landscape, so when this crisis is over or at least is less damaging than right now. what have we learned, particularly about globalisation, because it seems to me globalisation is we've known it to the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, into the 2000s, it doesn't sustainable going forward. when we will get out of this, definitely, there will definitely be a large amount of thinking and revision of the way the world has been functioning economically over the past decades because what you rightly point out is, this crisis is underlined two things. first we have to review the way the system operates, how we co—operate globally to make sure these types of pandemics may be contained much more quickly but more than that, also really puts under the spotlight the way our economy and with the amount of travelling we do in the way that global value

chain or the protection is functioning. i'm quite confident that some companies will reflect on where they source their components and how that affects their production and if it's too restricted to one country, or they should diversify. the sources of the components, including what they have in their production chain. the mindset of so many countries and leaders in the world today is not that of cooperation, it is of competition, of rivalry, protecting what they have against what others have and that seems to me to run entirely counter to the idea that in the future, we can approach these sort of potential problems and pandemics and health challenges in a cooperative way. we aren't being cooperative. look at donald trump trying to buy the intellectual property of the german company which is one of the most prominent in the search of a vaccine. wanted exclusive rights to use that

vaccine for americans. that's the mentality we have in our world today. well, he's not getting it, right, and everybody needs the vaccine and everybody needs to fight together this virus. 0n the economic and financial side, i think it will be more about diversification and security. you're right, it will lead us to look at things in a different way but that doesn't necessarily mean protectionism because what that shows as well is, we need to ensure that there is good supply, that there is masks going over borders, that they are not being produced in one country but can be in different countries. in some ways, yes, the production chain will likely be short but this is also a lesson in how, when we are not super organised about managing a global common issue and help is one, we run into very big and more

prolonged and unnecessary trouble. one final thought for you and you can argue it is slightly more positive. there is an extraordinary thing that has happened since this coronavirus really hits the world economy. we have seen a phenomenal improvement, for example, in the air quality that has been recorded in china. we've even seen fish coming back into the canals in venice. it is quite clear that as economic output and activity has stalled across the world, environmental conditions including emissions have actually improved in terms of what the world needs for its climate change challenge. let me quote to glen peters, the research director for the international climate and environment research centre in 0slo. he said, "we must find ways when we rebuild the economy "of learning some of these lessons.

"we mustn't simply restore emissions." you think we will learn that lesson? i think the shock is so big, that we will learn a lot of lessons and you are very right to point at climate, in part because the reduced biodiversity with climate change may be also responsible for how fast the virus may have spread or how the virus may emerge. from what i understand, i'm not a health expert. but the climate is also common good and it will have demonstrated how things can change rapidly when we do things differently. the travel will also change, the way businesses do things because we are all working, a lot of us aren't really working now, we have reduced our travel and yet a lot of activity by the containment of course can still go on so yes, i think the shock has been very big, is being very big and this will lead us to really rethink some

of our economic model. a very interesting thought to end on. laurence boone, i thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. hello, there. yesterday it was scotland that had the best of the day's bright weather, with some spells of sunshine coming through, for example in this weather watch picture from the aviemore area. it was not like that everywhere though. for england and wales, we've had a slow—moving weather front with us for a couple of days now, and that's been bringing some murky weather and outbreaks of light rain and drizzle. that front is this stripe of cloud you can see here.

and it is this weather front that separates the mild but rather murky weather to the south, to the clearer, sunnier conditions, but colder conditions that we have across the north of the uk. now, over the next few hours, that weather front is still with us, bringing cloud and rain, murky as well across parts of the midlands, wales and southern counties of england, with some hill fog patches. but it is the cloud that stops it from getting too cold, so it's actually quite mild. temperatures for some at around eight celsius over the next few hours. whereas, further north, with those clearer skies in place, yes, it i cold enough for a few bits of frost, although quite windy for the northern isles, and that will keep temperature from dropping too far. it will though bring a few showers into shetland and 0rkney as we start the day. there will be a few more showers coming and going into the north—west of scotland later on as well. but the winds will be getting lighter all the time. further south, we've got our weather front, that's not really moving very far through the day. if you start off with outbreaks of rain, chances are they will still probably be there, even into the latter part of the afternoon. temperatures for most around 8—10 degrees. but on the northern edge of this front, it could be quite chilly

for one or two areas, with temperatures around 5 degrees in one or two spots. for friday, well, ourfront is a still there but it is moving a little bit further southwards so the cloud still thick enough for an odd patch of rain. we'll have these cold winds, gusty winds, particularly around the headlands of south—west england, the hills and coasts of south wales and the wind will make you feel quite chilly even though there will be a little bit more of that sunshine to go around. looking at the weather charts into the weekend — this area of high pressure really is setting up for quite a prolonged dry spell of weather for the uk, but the amount of cloud that we see is likely to vary from place to place. now, on saturday, we could see some areas of cloud come across the north sea. that may well affect some of our eastern coast. but the best of any bright or sunny weather, well, probably west of scotland, north—west england, western wales, the favourite areas for seeing some lengthy spells of sunshine. that cool wind though will knock the edge off those temperatures around these eastern coasts. temperatures just 6 in aberdeen — that's not particularly warm for that time of year. the second half of the weekend also looks like it will stay dry with occasional bright or sunny spells and the fine weather looks set to last for many of us

into the first part of next week as well.

hello, this is bbc news, i'm maryam moshiri, our top stories: the european central bank launches a multi billion dollar emergency scheme to ease the impact of the worsening coronavirus pandemic. stock markets across the world continue to plunge dramatically in response to the pandemic, with investors in asia worried about the economic impact. china records no new domestic cases of the coronavirus for the first time since the pandemic began in the city of wuhan last year. while in the uk, emergency legislation to tackle the worsening pandemic there is being introduced