World Must Move Fast to ‘Whatever It Takes’ Mode, El-Erian Says 

(Bloomberg) -- Mohamed El-Erian said the world’s policy makers will do all they can to keep the coronavirus from spurring a deeper economic slump, but he said it’s worrisome that international policy coordination isn’t as solid as it was in the past.

“I foresee a whatever-it-takes policy approach that is going to be both in central banks and government agencies,” El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz SE, said in a Bloomberg Radio interview Monday. A sudden economic halt “is particularly dangerous because it destroys both demand and supply, and that is what we are living through right now.”

Policy makers “have massive catch-up to play” as the scope of the challenge becomes clearer, said El-Erian, who’s also a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He said he doesn’t see direct parallels with the start of the crisis in 2008 because he isn’t worried about banks and potential issues with the payments and settlements system. But he said another comparison is more worrying: the world’s economic authorities so far aren’t acting in concert as they have in the past.

“The extent of global policy coordination is much lower, and whether it’s the coronavirus, whether the excessive reliance on liquidity, whether it is markets that have been mispriced for a long time, this is a global problem that requires collective action,” he said.

But the kind of action that Group of 20 leaders took during the global financial crisis, when they met in London to coordinate a response, will likely be harder now, El-Erian said. “The bad thing relative to 2008 is that we’re not going to get a London Summit quickly.” that will allow to put in an economic bottoming.”

‘Do Not Buy’

In a subsequent interview on Bloomberg Television as U.S. stocks plunged at the open in New York, El-Erian said it’s too soon for investors to start buying again.

“Do not buy this dip, respect the technicals,” he said. “This will sort itself out, but will not sort itself out before some further damage unfortunately. You should also not panic.”

It’s time to stay on the sidelines and wait for technical factors to play out, as painful as it might be, he said.

He added that there’s been a turn in credit cycle as economic and earnings prospects have worsened and that the corporate bond market is likely to see an increase in defaults.

“You’re going to get more of a freeze on new issuance, companies with vulnerable balance sheets -- meaning little cash, high maturing debt -- are going to have difficulty re-funding themselves,” he said.

--With assistance from Jonathan Ferro, Tom Keene and Sarah Ponczek.

To contact the reporters on this story: Max Reyes in Washington at mreyes125@bloomberg.net;Jeff Kearns in Washington at jkearns3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Scott Lanman at slanman@bloomberg.net, Jeff Kearns

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