"In a rare peek at official thinking, James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Fed, told Bloomberg last week that the jobless rate could climb to 30% next quarter and that the economy could contract by 50%. That was not counting for the impact of hundreds of billions of dollars thrown at companies by Congress as support to hold on to their workers. But even so, private estimates after the legislation are similar — Goldman Sachs forecasts a 34% economic contraction and 13.2% unemployment in the second quarter, and Deutsche Bank 33% and 12%.

Although no one placed the forecasts in historical context, if we reach anywhere near those numbers, it will be far worse than the Great Recession, and nearly the magnitude of the Great Depression.

[..] In a recent piece in Foreign Affairs, Branko Milanovic, an economist at the City University of New York, describes a new global order characterized by such economic aloneness. It would be “a different world — deglobalization,” Milanovic said in an interview. In what he calls self-sufficient “natural economies,” countries would try to take care of all their needs themselves, and do business as little as possible with other countries. Milanovic foresees the potential for this future to cascade catastrophically: Economies would shrink, living standards would drop, and social glues could consequently break down, leading to the risk that those left jobless turn violent against people who are better off."

https://marker.medium.com/this-looks-like-a-depression-not-a-recession-16a123f966d8