GDP plummeted 9.5 percent in the second quarter of the year, an annualized rate of 32.9 percent. Just in case that’s not dramatic enough for you, here’s a view of GDP that you don’t normally see:
The reason you seldom see this view of raw GDP is that even big drops barely show up. The 1980 recession is hardly visible and even the 2008 Great Recession looks pretty puny. It’s just a nice, steady march of trendline growth until 2020. The coronavirus recession is the first in 90 years to be so big that it’s visible from outer space, so to speak.
I used to take solace from the fact that this drop was deliberately manufactured, which meant it could be deliberately remedied when the coronavirus was under control. Little did I know that our president had no real interest in controlling the virus and Republicans had no real interest in keeping the country afloat in the meantime. There is going to be tremendous suffering over the next year.
