Looking Forward, Many Zeroes And Double-Zeroes On The Global Roulette Wheel

By Brad DeLong:
Four times in the past century, a large chunk of the industrial world economy has fallen into a depression of high unemployment that was both deep and long: the United States in the 1930s, industrialized western Europe in the 1930s, western Europe in the 1980s, and Japan in the 1990s.Two of those times the economic downturn has cast a long and black shadow on the particular region's economic future: western Europe in the 1980s and Japan in the 1990s. In both, if they ever got or will get back to something like the pre-downturn trend of economic growth, it took decades before they did or will do so.One of these times we do not know what would have happened: at the end of the 1930s, Europe became the battlefield as Adolf Hitler launched World War II. And one time, the long-run growth trend was undisturbed: it is difficultComplete Story »