How bad will the coronavirus crash get?

From 'very bad' to 'we're ****ed': The range of economic outcomes is getting scarier by the day

A stock trader.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, AP)

When I set out to write this piece, my goal was to give readers some practical sense of the most likely economic consequences of the coronavirus crisis: a best-to-worst range of outcomes. That proved difficult for a few reasons.

First, we've never really dealt with anything like this, at least in the modern economic era. Second, what happens next depends enormously on the government's actions: how fast, how big, and how well-designed the policy response is.

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.