You think we have it bad? GDP plunged by 11.9 percent in Europe during the second quarter of the year. Here’s what that looks like:
There is, however, a bright side to this: Europe has mostly crushed COVID-19. They took their shutdown more seriously than we did, and they kept it in place for about a month longer. The result is an economic crash even worse than ours, but with prospects of a full recovery this year now that the virus is under control. By the end of the year we’ll know for sure whether the European or American strategy worked better in the long run.