So says Martin Wolf for The Financial Times, quoted here:
For the present depression to be shorter than its longest predecessor, it must end not later than April 2012. But output is close to 4 percent below its starting point, with eight months to go. ...
The cumulative loss of GDP is likely to be worse this time even than in the 1930s. It was 17.7 percent of GDP back then, against 14.5 percent, this time, so far. But this depression is not over. If growth were to be 2 percent a year, the cumulative loss would be over 18 percent of GDP.
This then is a huge depression, by UK standards. Yet the response is a shrug of the shoulders.
In America we can't bring ourselves even to speak of 'economic depression,' so deep is our collective delusion caused by the widespread gnosticism of political correctness.
The United States has had back to back years of declining GDP in 2008 and 2009, followed by a mere balance sheet recovery in 2010 defined entirely by massive government spending. With the latter now nearly at an end, GDP is in the toilet.
The answer of the Democrats is to propose more fake GDP. And unfortunately for the Republicans, they're stuck with their free-trade religion which has misallocated hundreds of billions of dollars abroad, especially to China, and with it all our jobs.
Where are the Patriots?
