A hundred years on, will there be another Great Depression?

Government indecision amid the coronavirus crisis has fuelled fears of a long recession - unless there is a huge fiscal response

Such was the scale of the global market crash last week in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, the spectre of the 1929 Wall Street rout and the ensuing Great Depression of the 1930s has been raised. Comparisons no longer seem fanciful.

The failure of the US and the UK to swing into action with a wide range of mitigation measures - despite the lessons of Italy's slow response to the spread of Covid-19 - has heightened concerns that a sustained, epochal downturn lies in wait.