Richard Brennan has a summary of the program:
[broken link removed]
Aside from the central thesis (an age of austerity, reduced standard of living, mass unemployment and public spending cuts - the worst recession since the Depression), the supporting cast is impressive - Nouriel Roubini, Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman. I found Krugman's comment that we (by which I take to mean the US, the UK and Europe) are in the same position that the US found itself in 1931 - the early stages of a banking collapse.
I don't claim to be an expert, by any means, but I agree with the central thesis. The massive levels of leverage that financial institutions have employed to speculate on everything from the price of property to the stock markets to the price of pork bellies are being unwound. All things being equal, the forced destruction of wealth is profoundly deflationary.
Governments and central banks are trying to pump in liquidity and now capital, but this comes nowhere near the amounts of money (in the form of assets) that have been destroyed. One days sharp fall in the DOW more than outweighs the $700bn US bank bailout, the losses on subprime securities are heading for a trillion dollars, the great CDS unwind could add a trillion more. This wealth destruction is coming out of the pockets of current and future generations, in particular out of pension funds. This is not costing just now, it will cost into the future.
One particular concern of Mr. Hendry's is that commercial credit is drying up. This is an exact parallel of what turned the Crash of 1929-31 into the Great Depression. Loans and credit lines to companies that might have survived with a little support are being pulled. The result is that either companies have to pay more for credit (forcing cutbacks) or that they cannot get credit at all and are closing. Maybe it wouldn't matter anyway. The Japanese tried to keep everything afloat after their crash in 1990. Eighteen years later, companies that were kept afloat, but still laden with debt are crashing (particularly real estate companies). Despite the massive amounts pumped in (increasing the Japanese national debt to 194% of GDP estimated for end of 2008) the economy has stagnated for 18 years and living standards have fallen.
It is not the end of the world, but will mark a sharp discontinuity with the last sixteen years of generally positive growth.