We will never know how bad things would have been without that aggressive, coordinated policy response. But as a student of economic history, I can say that all the ingredients of a second Great Depression were present. We’ve managed to avoid that extreme scenario, but the damage wrought by the Great Recession has been brutal nonetheless.
By the end of last year, the loss to global output from the crisis was roughly $ trillion, which is close to 15 per cent of global GDP. Today, there are over 60 million fewer jobs around the world than had the crisis not occurred.