Citi Just Made "Global Recession In 2016" Its Base Case Scenario

"Over the weekend, we reported that in a dramatic turn of events, the research division of Japan's second biggest brokerage house, Daiwa, did what nobody else has done before and released a report in which it made a global financial "meltdown", one resulting from nothing short of a Chinese economic cataclysm its base case scenario, its base case. It added that the impact of this global meltdown would "be the worst the world has ever seen." To wit:

Of all the possible risk scenarios the meltdown scenario is, realistically speaking, the most likely to occur. It is actually a more realistic outcome than the capital stock adjustment scenario.  The point at which the capital stock adjustment is expected to hit bottom is at a much lower point than in the previously discussed capital stock adjustment scenario (see Chart 8). As shown in the bottom right portion of this chart, the actual economic growth rate will continue to register considerably negative performance. If China’s economy, the second largest in the world, twice the size of Japan’s, were to lapse into a meltdown situation such as this one, the effect would more than likely send the world economy into a tailspin. Its impact could be the worst the world has ever seen.

We ended the post with the following rhetorical question: "now that Daiwa has broken the seal on Chinese and global doomsday scenarios, how soon other banks will follow in Daiwa's path, and predict an Armageddon scenario which sooner or later, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy even without the help of China's increasingly clueless micromanagers."
Today we got the answer: 48 hours - that's how long it took Citi's chief economist Willem Buiter to issue a report which was just as dire as Daiwa's, but because Citigroup is much more reliant on keeping it traditionally bullish clients as happy as possible, one had to read between the lines to get to the bottom line.
This is Citi's punchline: "A global recession starting in 2016, led by China is now our Global Economics team's main scenario. Uncertainty remains, but the likelihood of a timely and effective policy response seems to be diminishing."

at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-14/guest-post-eastern-europes-crisis-shame