At this point, the Ebola virus is largely contained in the United States, but if the disease spreads to Europe it could cause a market crash, says economist Peter Morici.
The economic impact of the Ebola virus "depends on whether it really spreads out of west Africa," Morici, professor of business at the University of Maryland, told Ed Berliner on "MidPoint" on
Newsmax TV on Wednesday.
Story continues below video.
Note: Watch Newsmax TV now on
DIRECTV Ch. 349 and
DISH Ch. 223
Get Newsmax TV on your cable system –
Click Here Now
"Two cases in the United States, even five or 10 cases, isn't spreading to the United States," he explained.
"If it remains containable, the impact is largely going to be in west Africa," he said. "The GDP [gross domestic product] consequence is not large for the world, but terribly large for those people because they are so poor."
However, "if it were to spread to Europe," it could spawn a kind of Black Swan event, he said.
"Europe is on the verge of fractionalizing anyway because the euro has proved to be a straitjacket that exploits . . . the Mediterranean countries to the benefit of Germany, Holland, Denmark, and so forth," Morici explained.
"If this spreads to Europe, that could bring Europe apart and it could be sort of an economic version of the dark ages, the Great Depression," he added.
The economy continues to flounder because "we're not using most of our human resources," he contends.
One of the problems, he explains, is that there are too many Americans going to college and earning unmarketable degrees.
"We only need about a quarter of the population to go to college, and we're sending more than half, and we're doing it on the cheap," Morici told Newsmax.
"We're sending them essentially to major in the social sciences, humanities, things like global studies, feminist literature, and what have you," he explained.
"People emerge without very much in the way of marketable skills except a bad attitude about American values like hard work and so forth," he said.
He says that this attitude comes from leaders such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama.
"They all say that Americans are victims and that somehow or other more government is going to rescue them from the savages of the private sector," he explained.
"The reality is it's the private sector that made America great and it's the war on the private sector, not the war on women or anything like that, that is depriving men and women of the opportunity to earn a decent living," he added.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.