All that glitters is actually gold.

"The evidence is mounting that March marked the start of a global recession," wrote Brice Baschuk. "The World Trade Organization (WTO) says 2020 trade could fall as much as 32%." "The optimistic view would mean a 2.5% contraction in global GDP this year, the WTO said, while the worst-case scenario would see an 8.8% decline." "From India to Italy, coronavirus lockdowns have closed businesses and kept billions of people homebound for weeks, provoking a simultaneous demand and supply shock that's snarled global production and logistics networks built without sufficient capacity to absorb a jolt of this magnitude." "Fitch Ratings on Tuesday said multi-notch downgrades of sovereign ratings are likely during 2020 due to coronavirus outbreak and a sharp fall in oil prices." "It said there have been 65 multi-notch sovereign rating downgrades since 1995 involving 33 different sovereigns, representing 22 percent of all sovereign downgrades." "Ratings agency Moody's downgraded South Africa's sovereign rating to 'junk' status on Friday, moving the rating to Ba1 from Baa3 and maintaining a negative outlook." "The key driver behind the rating downgrade to Ba1 is the continuing deterioration in fiscal strength and structurally very weak growth, which Moody's doesn't expect current policy settings to address effectively," Moody's said in a statement. What about India? Goldman Sachs reduced economic growth outlook for financial year 2020-21 to 1.6%. "But it expects a strong sequential recovery in the second half of the fiscal year based on three assumptions" -- that the lockdown is successful in stopping the spread of the virus, a fiscal stimulus by the center and states and monetary policy by the Reserve Bank (RBI). Problem is that India's fiscal deficit is estimated to shoot up to 6.2% of GDP this financial year by Fitch Ratings. Which will increase debt load of the country. "A massive exodus of capital from emerging economies has left many in a Catch-22 position," wrote Enda Curran and Michelle Jamrisko. "Interest-rate cuts can help households and companies, but in an increasing number of countries they're driving rates so low that they don't even compensate for inflation - adding an incentive for foreign funds to pulls out." No one knows how quickly the global economy will recover. "A V-shape in which the rebound is as swift as the slump was the favored trajectory early on but now more are starting to worry about a U-shape. The most pessimistic are looking at global growth tracing an L or a W -- or a more mangled path which bears little resemblance to Roman letters," wrote Michelle Jamrisko and Simon Kennedy. "For years, gold bugs were relegated to the fringes of financial markets," wrote der Walt, Pakiam and Barnert. But now, demand is so great that there is not enough of the metal to buy. Indians have always loved gold. It's more solid than paper.