Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economy was already in a troubled state. Already struggling with slowing economic growth and a massive accumulation of debt, the fundamental factors behind the 2008-2009 recession were never resolved; they were just plastered over, and then along came COVID-19. The global economy was only being sustained by unprecedented monetary stimulus, quantitative easing, which is shorthand for printing money, and ultra-low interest rates—rates that were already at bedrock; couldn't go any lower. That catastrophe is not a singular crisis like COVID-19, for which a vaccine may ultimately be found. The COVID-19 crisis is an unprecedented deflationary shock to the entire global economy.