We all know they meant "in a year", but the article isn't explicit about it -- it just says
>> the output of the world’s third-largest economy
Not "annual", not even "GDP". I bet a lot of readers came away thinking "a shortfall as big as Japan".
And maybe not just lay readers -- a "smart but not knowledgeable" reader might try to convert the stock into a flow or vice versa by assuming some interest rate and doing a back-of-the-envelope net present calculation and be off from the real numbers by an order of magnitude.
We all know they meant "in a year", but the article isn't explicit about it -- it just says
>> the output of the world’s third-largest economy
Not "annual", not even "GDP". I bet a lot of readers came away thinking "a shortfall as big as Japan".
And maybe not just lay readers -- a "smart but not knowledgeable" reader might try to convert the stock into a flow or vice versa by assuming some interest rate and doing a back-of-the-envelope net present calculation and be off from the real numbers by an order of magnitude.