The Slow Climb Up

This disappointing performance shouldn’t be surprising. We have presented evidence that recessions associated with systemic banking crises tend to be deep and protracted and that this pattern is evident across both history and countries. Subsequent academic research using different approaches and samples has found similar results.

One of the biggest reasons people who voted for President Obama in 2008 are on the fence about voting for him in the November election is because they believe the recovery has been too slow, but in Bloomberg News, two economists argue that we have to view the recovery more realistically, and that historical data shows that systemic crises take much longer to mend (Bill Clinton has said we’re in the middle of a 10-year economic recovery). The point makes sense to me here, but I also understand that it’d be a very hard thing to swallow if you’ve been unemployed for quite a long time.

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