The Economic Devastation Is Going to Be Worse Than You Think

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here.

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here.

This is a tsunami, with a number of big waves dead ahead.”

Mark Zandi is not an epidemiologist, and he was not talking about the rapid spread of the coronavirus. He is the chief economist at Moody’s, an analyst highly regarded by both political parties, and generally not prone to hyperbole. Yet when I spoke with him on the phone yesterday, he immediately reached for the metaphor of a devastating natural disaster to describe the toll that the pandemic will take on American commerce—the businesses it will destroy, the jobs it will wipe out, the retirement nest eggs it will crack and shatter.

That there will be economic pain is already clear. The stock market has lost more than one-third