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IMF Says Great Lockdown Recession Likely Worst Since Depression

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131–134 of 134 posts

Re: IMF Says Great Lockdown Recession Likely Worst Since Depression

#131

Based on some of these comments, the degree to which so many are out of touch is unbelievable. 17 MILLION people have filed for unemployment and I'm sure this week will be another 6M as companies don't keep this much cash on hand. Tech's been living in a bubble for a long time and reality is starting to hit. Get out and talk to real people, not your Slack buddies working in SF.

I agree with you but the high number of unemployment claims is also a feature of the bailout plans. Let’s hope people will get hired back quickly.

Many companies will go out of business permanently. Even deep payroll cuts will not be enough to keep them solvent.

Re: IMF Says Great Lockdown Recession Likely Worst Since Depression

#133
post #4
post #2

I mean, by default, any economic crisis is always going to be worse than/bigger than the previous, just due to growth. Am I wrong for thinking this way?

This sort of thing is usually measured in percentage lost from the previous peak, or some other relative measure that corrects for the overall growth over time.

I'm not even talking about econometrics. As our supply chains become more and more integrated globally, as the amount of services built on top of each other continue to grow, and as the global economic system continues to use, build, and develop these services, any significant disruption is going to be more catastrophic than the previous which didn't rely on as much integration as it currently does.

Re: IMF Says Great Lockdown Recession Likely Worst Since Depression

#134

It's going to be worse than the Great Depression.

Nobody knows for a fact how this will turn out, and if they say they do they are lying and vastly overestimating their own knowledge.

There are no modern equivalents to compare to, so the best thing we have is the Great Depression; but when you look at the circumstances, it's not exactly a comparison that gives you a lot of confidence.

First of all, the GD had purely financial causes. Over-speculation in the stock market, high debts, combined with a struggling agriculture sector. As reality dawned, a mass sell-off took place that snowballed into what we now know as "the Great Depression".

If we for the sake of argument assume that what's happening now is exactly what happened during the GD, you still have to take into account how different the world is today. We are no longer in a mostly industrial, manufacturing economy. Our capacity for producing everything that keeps people alive is higher than it has ever been, which is another way of saying that our economy is more efficient than it has ever been. This is why most people can "get away" with not producing essential goods: many, many people work in "non-essential" jobs (for survival) like the service sector.

The only sane thing to say right now is that noone knows exactly how this will turn out, but saying that things will be worse than the GD is not only saying that the circumstances are way worse (that's absolutely not obvious to me), but also that our economy is weaker than it was 100 years ago, which to me sounds quite absurd.

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