The best way to avoid a coronavirus depression

Save jobs later by saving small- and medium-sized businesses now

A mall.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

On the eve of World War One, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey famously remarked, "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time." It was with that quote firmly in mind that J.P. Morgan, America's largest bank, put out an economic report yesterday titled, "The lamps are going out all across the economy."

It's hardly an understatement. The banks think the coronavirus-paralyzed U.S. economy will shrink by 4.0 percent on an annualized basis this quarter and by an astonishing 14.0 percent in the second quarter. And that basically sudden-stop forecast is no outlier. The growing Wall Street consensus is that the economy might shrink by at least 10 percent from April through June, which would match the largest quarterly contraction since those numbers started being calculated in the postwar era.

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James Pethokoukis

James Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places.