We are not at the bottom yet

If you thought that the recession was going away think again.

Martin Wolff reports on the work of two economic historians, Barry Eichengreen of the University of California at Berkeley and Kevin O’Rourke of Trinity College, Dublin,who are tracking this recession with the 1930's depression

The bad news is that this recession fully matches the early part of the Great Depression. The good news is that the worst can still be averted.

They found that

1.global industrial output tracks the decline in industrial output during the Great Depression horrifyingly closely. and

2.the collapse in the volume of world trade has been far worse than during the first year of the Great Depression.

This morning's unemployment news, though not unexpected,sees jobless figures hitting a new high.They have increased by 232,000 to 2.26 million in the three months to April.

More worrying is the trend in youth unemployment which is at its worst level since 1994 after a 74,000 increase in the number of 18 to 24-year-olds out of work to 695,000.