August 04, 2012
A piece that noted the slow pace of the recovery and compared it to other recessions never once mentioned the housing bubble. The fact that this recession was brought on by the collapse of a housing bubble, as opposed to the Fed raising interest rates to slow the economy, makes it qualitatively different from prior post-war recessions with the exception of the 2001 downturn that was brought on by the collapse of the stock bubble. It would have been worth making this point instead of turning the discussion into a he said/she said that concludes:
“‘The debate is unresolvable,’ said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank, and the former director of the Congressional Budget Office. ‘We don’t have a lot of data points. We only have about a dozen recessions where we have a lot of data.'”
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