A Second Great Depression, or Worse?

Simon Johnson, the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is the co-author of "13 Bankers."

With the United States and European economies having slowed markedly according to the latest data, and with global growth continuing to disappoint, a reasonable question increasingly arises: Are we in another Great Depression?

The easy answer is "no" - the main features of the Great Depression have not yet manifested themselves and still seem unlikely. But it is increasingly likely that we will find ourselves in the midst of something nearly as traumatic, a long slump of the kind seen with some regularity in the 19th century, particularly if presidential election-year politics continue to head in a dangerous direction.

The Great Depression had three main characteristics, seen in the United States and most other countries that were severely affected. None of these have been part of our collective experience since 2007.

First, output dropped sharply after 1929, by over 25 percent in real terms in the United States (using the Bureau of Economic Analysis data, from its Web site, for real gross domestic product, using chained 1937 dollars). In contrast, the United States had a relatively small decline in G.D.P. after the latest boom peaked. According to the bureau's most recent online data, G.D.P. peaked in the second quarter of 2008 at $14.4155 trillion and bottomed out in the second quarter of 2009 at $13.8541 trillion, a decline of about 4 percent.

Second, unemployment rose above 20 percent in the United States during the 1930s and stayed there. In the latest downturn, we experienced record job losses for the postwar United States, with around eight million jobs lost. But unemployment only briefly touched 10 percent (in the fourth quarter of 2009; see the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site).

Even by the highest estimates - which include people discouraged from looking for a job, thus not registered as unemployed - the jobless rate reached around 16 to 17 percent. It's a jobs disaster, to be sure, but not the same scale as the Great Depression. (more)