The World Bank said Monday the world is facing an unprecedented health and economic crisis that has spread with astonishing speed and will result in the largest shock the global economy has witnessed in more than seven decades. Millions of people are expected to be pushed into extreme poverty. In an updated “Global Economic Prospects,” the World Bank projected that global economic activity will shrink by 5.2% this year, the deepest recession since a 13.8% global contraction in 1945-46 at the end of World War II. The 5.2% downturn this year will be the fourth worst global downturn over the past 150 years, exceeded only by the Great Depression of the 1930s and the periods after World War I and World War II when many the economies of many war-torn countries were devastated and the United States and other nations demobilized after massive defense buildups. Because […]