I don't want to depress you too much.

Now, I didn't come here to depress you about the state of the global supply chain.

Government revenues depend on the value of domestic output, not only consumption. Though lower oil prices depress consumer prices, they should boost production and overall GDP.

Many claimed that the treaty would depress wages, destroy jobs, and ravage the agricultural industry in the US. Instead, NAFTA boosted all three signatories economies and became the template for hundreds of subsequent free trade agreements.

Moreover, the extremes of collapse were amplified by unnecessarily tight monetary policies which deepened the debt deflation process, served to depress output and employment and caused serious dislocations in the corporate and financial sectors (Stiglitz, 2002).

Confronted with another global slowdown that could depress its export markets for years, China needs to boost consumption even as it cools investment. And it needs to so in ways that do not rely on excessive credit expansion.

But these demand reducing measures also reduce economic growth, causing deficit reduction targets to be missed. Getting fiscal consolidation back on track then requires more spending cuts, which depress growth still further, causing budget performance to worsen even more.

Private and public debt levels are high and possibly unsustainable. After all, the loss of competitiveness that led to large external deficits remains largely unaddressed, while adverse demographic trends, weak productivity gains, and slow implementation of structural reforms depress potential growth.

Additional supplies of oil to global markets will keep prices down or depress them further. Apart from the economic gain for Europe s economies, low oil prices yield important strategic benefits particularly with respect to constraining Russian President Vladimir Putin s revisionist ambitions in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Another factor that may be contributing to flat productivity is that many corporations run traditional physical business models parallel to new digital ones. Adding high tech systems to traditional processes can temporarily increase costs and thus depress productivity, especially if the new and old businesses are not well connected.

But that would require them to rely less on monetary policy and more on appropriate fiscal policies (such as higher spending on productive infrastructure). Even income policies that lift wages, and hence labor income and consumption, are a better source of domestic growth than currency depreciations (which depress real wages).

Free products also depress the value of close substitutes. While it may require charging 100 per ticket to recover the costs of a 1 million theater play, some filmmakers can make money on a 200 million film by selling 10 tickets to consumers who are unwilling to wait a few weeks until their cable TV provider offers it.

Even if we project a relatively rapid economic recovery, by the time this lesser depression is over, the US will have experienced an investment shortfall of at least 4 trillion. Until that investment shortfall is made up, the missing capital will serve to depress the level of real GDP in the US by two full percentage points.

Moreover, political gridlock over fiscal adjustment is likely to persist, regardless of whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney wins November s presidential election. Thus, new fights on the debt ceiling, risks of a government shutdown, and rating downgrades could further depress consumer and business confidence, reducing spending and accelerating a flight to safety that would exacerbate the fall in stock markets.

With the risk premium at current levels, there is a real danger that Greece may not be able to extricate itself from its predicament, regardless of what it does, because further budget cuts would further depress economic activity, reducing tax revenues and worsening the debt to GDP ratio. Given that danger, the risk premium will not revert to its previous level in the absence of outside assistance.

If global savers and investors expect the dollar s depreciation to continue, they will flee the currency unless they are compensated appropriately for keeping their money in the US and its assets, implying that the gap between US and foreign interest rates will widen. As a result, the cost of capital in the US will soar, discouraging investment and reducing consumption spending as high interest rates depress the value of households principal assets their houses.

Here, unfair trade agreements including the persistence of unjustifiable agricultural subsidies, which depress the prices upon which the income of many of the poorest depend have played a role. The developed countries have not lived up to their promise in Doha in November 2001 to create a pro development trade regime, or to their pledge at the G 8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005 to provide significantly more assistance to the poorest countries.