摘要：F
OR more than a year, barely a day has passed that we
have not heard dire economic news about the United
States, Europe, or Japan. Unemployment has been
rising, company profi ts have been falling, fi nancial
markets have been tumbling, and the housing sector has been
collapsing. Is there a single word to describe these develop-
ments? Yes: “recession.”
The ongoing global financial crisis has been accompanied
by recessions in many countries. This pattern is consistent
with the historical record. Synchronized recessions have
occurred in advanced economies several times in the past
four decades—the mid-70s, early 80s, early 90s, and early
2000s. Because the United States is the world’s largest econ-
omy and has strong trade and financial linkages with many
other economies, most of these globally synchronized reces-
sion episodes also coincide with U.S. recessions.
Although U.S. recessions have become milder over time,
the current recession is likely to change this trend. Already
16 months old—with sharp declines in consumption and
investment—it could become one of the longest and deepest
recessions since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
