As bad as the GFC?

Here are my estimates of the big 3 (US, Euro-zone, Japan) and big 4 (the previous 3 plus China) PMIs compared with industrial production.  I have added the UK to the calculations.  It is 3.3% of the world economy.  Adding Russia and India and Brazil would flesh out the indices nicely, but no "flash" estimates of their PMIs are made.

We do get "flash" PMIs for the US, UK, Euro-zone and Japan, but not for China, where I have estimated the average April PMI for both the official and the Caixin Bank surveys at 45.3, slightly down from March.  I say "I have estimated" but in fact I used an automated estimation program I wrote years ago which uses several different techniques to estimate the latest month, and averages them.  For what it's worth, I have no idea what the latest PMI for China will be when it is released.  Remember, this kind of survey asks whether output, sales, order books, etc., are more than last month.  It is possible that the Chinese economic trajectory lifted again in April, so its PMIs will again be above 50%.  However, it is equally possible that even though China itself is picking up, its exports have fallen because the rest of the world is still slumping, and that this has had some effect on the domestic situation.  We shall see in a few days' time.

At the low point of the cycle in 2009, during the GFC, world industrial production fell 12.5% year on year.  That was at the end of a sustained downturn lasting 15 months.  If countries are able to come out of lockdown as quickly as China has, then the downturn might not be so deep.  But that's unlikely.  The US's blunders with the coronavirus and its prob'ly very slow recovery from the very deep downturn that is developing there will keep the whole world economy back.  And until there is a vaccine—if there is ever one—borders won't be opened, and new outbreaks of the virus will keep on happening which will keep on holding back the economic recovery