There are times when an anticipated scenario is profoundly shocking, even when it says broadly what I would have expected. The @OBR_UK commentary on the economic impact of #Covid19 crisis is one such. Because the negative numbers it publishes are so big as to induce vertigo...

They include national income or GDP falling 35% in the second quarter of this year, unemployment rising by 2m to a rate of 10% (worse than in the banking crisis), public sector net borrowing of £273bn or 14% of GDP this year (a multiple of its rise in the banking crisis),...

income tax revenues falling £57bn, VAT falling £30bn, all public sector receipts dropping £130bn, the Coronavirus job retention scheme (the furlough scheme) costing £42bn, the self-employed income support scheme costing £10bn, the small business grant scheme costing £15bn,...

the business rates package costing £13bn and all such government decisions collectively costing just under £100bn. It means that between March of 2019 and the expected peak in March 2021, the national debt as a percentage of GDP will rise a staggering, almost...

unprecedented, 30 percentage points of GDP. Over three years, this is equivalent to a rise in the national debt of £600bn. To be clear, the OBR may well be erring on the side of optimism, because "for now" it is assuming no lasting economic hit, that the economy will...

recover relatively quickly when the the pandemic is under control and the lockdown measures are being eased. This is an assumption that it accepts will have to be revisited.