At long last, the president declared a national emergency on Friday that took aim at some of the specific repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic. But we need much more, specifically, a large injection of broad fiscal stimulus, ideally through a simple one-time payment to all Americans. Let’s first acknowledge that the United States may well already be in a recession. On Thursday, the stock market dipped — albeit briefly, at least for the moment — into bear market territory, almost always a precursor of recession. That would equate to a downturn on the magnitude of what occurred in the early 1990s, when unemployment rose by 2.8 percentage points.

Source: New York Times March 14, 2020 18:56 UTC