A Harvard professor writing in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal pegs the chances of our recession morphing into a full-blown depression at about 20%: “The bottom line is that there is ample reason to worry about slipping into a depression. There is a roughly one-in-five chance that U.S. GDP and consumption will fall by 10% or more, something not seen since the early 1930s.”
Yes, my layman’s grasp of the macroeconomics does allow me to understand that such odds are reason for alarm.
Nevertheless, I found the idea that there’s an 80% chance we won’t all be selling apples on the street corner somewhat comforting.
