海角大神

Less than two months into a partial lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the country has begun to feel the economic squeeze. Many industries remain shuttered. Unemployment may be approaching record highs. And while Congress has dispensed trillions of dollars toward helping businesses stay afloat, economists say we鈥檙e still on the brink of a financial crisis unlike any we鈥檝e seen in modern times.

鈥淲hat we鈥檙e doing these days is something completely different in terms of scale,鈥� says Robert J. Barro, an economics professor at Harvard University. 鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to counter the spread of the disease by having an even sharper economic contraction that we鈥檙e basically engineering in the short term.鈥�

Still, previous economic crises can bring perspective to this new challenge, especially in terms of the changes brought on by financial collapse. The Great Depression, for example, paved the way for new economic ideas even as it transformed the outlook of an entire generation. And while we鈥檙e still feeling the aftershocks of the Great Recession, we also see evidence of recovery and renewal.

鈥淲e鈥檙e living through something that past generations have lived through,鈥� says Timothy Taylor, managing editor at the Journal of Economic Perspectives. So, he adds, 鈥淵ou change some patterns. You do other things. And then we kind of hope that in some period of time ... maybe we can be down the other side of the curve.鈥�

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