Asia Times: [2] “For the first time in my life, I think it’s conceivable,” writes Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post economic columnist.
[3] John Mauldin of Mauldin Economics is more blunt: “We are facing a depression, not a recession.”
[4] For those of us not having lived through the 1930s, the Great Depression was when the national output of the US plunged by 25%; unemployment spiked to 25% in1933 and remained double digit for the decade.
[5] Similar contraction in economic activity and rise in unemployment occurred simultaneously around the world. [6] By comparison a recession is mild and brief. There’ve been about a dozen in the US since Wold War II with an average duration of ten months or so. Post-war unemployment peaks were 10.8% in 1982 and 9% in 2008. And not every country experienced such a contraction simultaneously.
The 2008 recession was triggered when credit froze up due to questions about which banks were infected with worthless mortgage-backed securities. The US economy was saved by nearly $1 trillion in government stimulus funds.
The current slowdown is taking place because the movement of people is freezing up due to another type of infection. And economists agree the recent $2 trillion stimulus package is simply not enough.