People who live in New York City need never carry an umbrella. At the first sign of a cloud burst, nearly every corner has a ramshackle opportunist selling chintzy parasols for five or 10 bucks apiece.
Supply magically meets demand. Instantly and without orchestration. It's a microcosm of the way the U.S. economy usually works. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" rarely fumbles.
Needless to say, these aren't normal times, as some supermarkets are emptied of toilet paper, rice, flour and other staples. Nevertheless, pandemic panic consumption shortly will be a distant memory. The recent grocery cart frenzy will seem pointless.
"All the grocery stores are going to have pallets of toilet paper sitting in the aisles, and nobody is going to buy it, because who needs to buy toilet paper when you've got a year's worth sitting in your garage?" Daniel Stanton, a supply chain expert, recently told CNBC.
"The U.S. produces a huge amount of food. We're also an exporter of food, so we're going to be OK," he said.
Hospitals may wait weeks or months to have all the protective clothing and advanced medical gear they'll require as millions fall ill with the coronavirus. But, like the spontaneous umbrella sales force of Manhattan sidewalks, retailers are stepping up to meet the more prosaic needs of U.S. households, from food to pharmaceuticals.
Amazon, Walmart, Lowes and other retailers have announced plans to hire 444,000 more warehouse and delivery workers. Target and eight other major retailers have given employees a temporary pay bump as an incentive to face the perils and fatigue of keeping shelves stocked and checkout lines moving.
That said, widespread shortages of consumer staples in recent weeks reveal the shortcomings of market assumptions that don't apply in times of trouble. While household goods are being restocked, two pervasive forces work against uninterrupted supplies of big-ticket items, from cars and appliances to laptop computers and cellphones.
