Many comparisons of current US economic conditions with the beginning months of the Great Depression indicate that things are not as bad as they were 80 years ago, but if one looks globally, as Eichengreen and O’Rourke have, the situation is worse today than then. “[W]orld industrial production, trade, and stock markets are diving faster now than during 1929-30.” They include graphs of these metrics and of policy responses (central bank discount rates, money supply, and government deficits) comparing now to then. They conclude:
[T]he world is currently undergoing an economic shock every bit as big as the Great Depression shock of 1929-30. Looking just at the US leads one to overlook how alarming the current situation is even in comparison with 1929-30.
The good news, of course, is that the policy response is very different. The question now is whether that policy response will work.