The economic downturn that we are currently experiencing is making the last recession look like a Sunday picnic.  Yes, 2008 and 2009 were bad, but they weren't anything like this.  Unprecedented intervention by the Federal Reserve has allowed the rich to get even richer during this crisis, but meanwhile millions upon millions of ordinary Americans are deeply suffering.  Unfortunately, what we have gone through so far is just the beginning.

As a child, I was a big fan of Sesame Street, and one of the characters that really stood out to me was Count von Count.  I loved the fact that he was always counting things, and that is what I am going to do in this article in order to illustrate how bad economic conditions have now become.

Let's start with the number 7.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, approximately 7 million more Americans would have jobs right now if the COVID pandemic had never happened…

But in fact, what the CBO is projecting is dire: around 7 million people out of work in 2021 whom CBO thought before the pandemic would be working. That's dire – and a call to immediate action, not calm, not wait-and-see.