If everybody stays home for six months, “it is going to be like the Great Depression,” Hassett, who’s returning to the White House to advise on economic matters, told CNN on Thursday.

Policy Key
The downturn’s depth and duration will depend on the economic policy response. It was policy mistakes -- particularly by the Fed -- that turned the contraction nearly a century ago into a depression.

“I am fearful of that if we don’t do the right policy,” said Hubbard, now at Columbia Business School.

A big concern: The sudden stop leads to widespread firings and bankruptcies that scar the economy for years, as in the Great Depression.

Goldman Sachs sees jobless claims surging to a record 2.25 million in the week ended March 21, while Bank of America projects 3 million and Citigroup 4 million. That compares with 281,000 in the prior week and would be more than triple the record 695,000 during one week in 1982.

Greg Brown, finance professor at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, said unemployment will rise as high as 9% in two months, from February’s 50-year low of 3.5%.

With such job loss, “spending is not going to be as easy to restart because you just can’t see the same level of spending if you have people that have lost that income,” said Andrew Hollenhorst, chief U.S. economist at Citigroup Inc.

In addition, if companies can’t make planning and investment commitments now, “that can have impacts on spending today but also on potential innovation in the future,” said Tara Sinclair, an economist at job website Indeed and professor at George Washington University.

Unlike nearly a century ago, the Fed has acted fast, cutting interest rates effectively to zero, restarting quantitative easing and resurrecting emergency financing facilities it used during the financial crisis.

President Donald Trump, who has been criticized by some for a sluggish response, has also now recognized the enormity of the coming economic hit. He said Saturday that negotiators in Congress and his administration are “very close” to agreement on a plan that an adviser said will aim to boost the U.S. economy by about $2 trillion. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was aiming for a final vote on the measure Monday.