Recession was here long before the virus. Recession is by definition 2 quarters of negative gdp growth.

https://tradingeconomics.com/saudi-arabia/gdp-growth

Saudi arabia has been in recession all of 2019. Russia has nothing to do with why they arent cutting production.

https://tradingeconomics.com/mexico/gdp-growth

Mexico as well. All of 2019.

https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp-growth

Japan technically hasn't joined the recession game but there's no chance they don't announce recession in May.

https://tradingeconomics.com/france/gdp-growth

France announces recession May 1st. Their martial law and banning of basic human rights will have to end.

Now comes the big question; how much debt is the world governments putting on? Canada's private debt to GDP: https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/private-debt-to-gdp 266% debt is insanity.

https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/households-debt-to-incom...

Debt to income >100% means you cant pay your bills. Canada is above 170%. Canada cant take on any new debt. Bank of Canada has been writing papers on how the debt level is so tremendously high that we could never take an economic slowdown. That's certainly here due to the virus.

So the better question is not that it's a recession. Recession was already happening; it's certainty. The better question is if it's a depression.

US unemployment numbers are out. It's peak great depression numbers; though this is solely due to virus. Mind you also, this great depression number is France's status quo numbers.

There's also an analysis to be done, one of the unique things about depressions vs recessions is social tensions. Right before depressions, there's always an unusual amount of social tensions. Which if you're reading this site or just watching what's going on with world politics. That's certainly unusual. This may be a depression. Which yes, this will be worse than 2008 if that's the case.

The bigger issue with these problems. How much quantitative easing is happening? How much money is being printed to stem the crash. Unprecedented amounts of money is coming to the markets. The fed is buying so many bonds right now that they are artificially keeping the crash from happening. The bond market is about to explode. The fed cant keep this up. They haven't paid back the $4 trillion from the financial crisis.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_St...

Eventually they money tree dies OR you have to print so much money to balance the books that your people become tremendously poorer. Japan is already at 250% debt to gdp. USA is around 100%. China has done this multiple times over the last 10 years. Greece was around 200% when they stopped reporting their debt a couple years ago. Good for them, they are down to around 15% unemployment in Greece. Disaster.

The house of cards aka debt will come calling soon. Everyone exclaims 'china owns all the debt' that's the wrong way to think about it. The debt is owned by Pensioners or more specifically pension funds. Boomers are retiring over the next 10 years. The worker shortage of 2030 just got much less severe because the coronavirus is killing off boomers; but the inflation is coming. That money will be spread around and be spent by the unemployed. This will cause inflation to go along with this recession/depression.

What will the governments do?

There will be 2 things primarily. Bankruptcy and decreasing of managerialism. This is because we are a post-communism and post-capitalism world now. The new world order is the tech revolution. Google's freemium model has unlocked and/or broken the world. Bastions of capitalism/communism will go to war with tech revolution. France will probably lead the fight and lose horribly because of it. USA will start this battle years from now.

Want to know what the future looks like? Google https://rework.withgoogle.com/