Liquidity Management in the Great Lockdown. Will There Be A Financial Crisis on Main Street?

Professor Almeida will examine how companies are managing their liquidity in the COVID-19 crisis. He will discuss about the dash for cash that has been happening since March and the importance of bank credit lines as a source of liquidity for large companies. He will also explore how a liquidity crisis in the corporate sector can trigger a wave of bankruptcies that has the potential to create a full-blown financial crisis. He will also examine the role of government policies, such as the Main Street Lending Program, in mitigating the risk of such a crisis. Finally, he will provide some forecasts about what may happen to US companies in the near future, given what we know about the propagation of the disease and how people are reacting to the slow reopening of the US economy.