Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Well, it's bad, and it's bad in the sense that we haven't seen a drop this big recently. For example, the biggest drop we saw in gross domestic product during the last recession in 2001 was 1.4 percent. It's also bigger than the reductions we saw in the 1990-91 recession, but it is less than the drops that we saw in the recession of the early 1980s, when gross domestic product in two consecutive quarters fell by first 4.9 percent and then 6.4 percent. So we have a way to go there. But of course, the all-time record is held by the Great Depression. We had double-digit decline in gross domestic product over the period 1929 to 1933. And of course, that's better known as the Great Depression. That is a record that I am very confident will continue to hold."