Marios Braindump

Since weeks  the media is reporting about the severity of the current economic crisis, comparing it with the Great Depression (GD) that began 1929. However, to me this seemed like a historic exaggeration since I couldn’t really rediscover the severe effects of the GD in the current crisis. However, I now found some figures that changed my mind.

In this article, the authors compare different economic metrrices of both times. The astonishing image that emerges is that the current crisis has already reached a great deal of the intensity of GD, but much faster. For example, we have already reached about 70% of the decrease in stock market value and about 35% of the decrease in world industrial output compared to the worst values during great depression. I find that a quite surprising result considering  the known social and political consequences of the GD. (Figure courtesy of Zeit Online)

Tags:economy english politics | Filed on April 29th, 2009 | 1 Comment »