The Politics of Recession

As the credit crunch of 2007 turned into the financial crash of 2008, increasing concerns were voiced that worse was to follow, and that the crash would turn into a global recession, which if it proved deep and long enough could produce a more generalized crisis of the whole economic and political system. The IMF World Economic Outlook published in January 2009 and discussed in Chapter 2 predicted that for the first time since 1945 the advanced economies taken as a whole would experience a contraction of economic activity in 2009. By 2010, however, it was expecting a modest recovery, and for the rising economies, it predicted a slowdown in economic growth in 2009, but then a sharp increase in 2010.