Stunning: has any industrialized country ever experienced income reductions of -14% and -15% (annualized) in successive quarters?

But now the good news (from Bloomberg): The consensus forecast had been a 16% reduction in Japanese income… This gives a whole new meaning to the Brad Sester's comment that the US is exporting the crisis by not importing. Below is a picture from GCaptain's blog. Of course, all this is captured succinctly by the Baltic Dry Index that shows the collapse of shipping as the price for container capacity has tanked in the face of huge excess capacity. A wonderful application of the locomotive effect discussed in Chapter 15. It is an interesting exercise to work through Figure 15.9, how a drop in imports hurts the rest of the world.