A false dawn

April is the cruelest month - if you're an economist. Seriously, the dismal science has outdone itself in the past week. Here are some graphs charting the collapse in trade flows. (Bonus: here are some related statistics and graphs tracking the slowdown of bilateral US-UK trade). Here are some measuring the even faster disintegration of capital flows. Here are some which show that by every indicator, the global economy is tracking or doing worse than during the Great Depression. And here is the impossible (to paraphrase Felix Salmon) list of things we would need to do to avoid another Black Swan like this occuring in the future.

I am most troubled by the argument that current aggressive policy responses may eventually end the recession without addressing the fundamental problems which caused it in the first place. Green shoots? Try cold snap.