La nuova normalità? Un decennio di crescita anemica per gli U.S.A.

Mentre negli U.S.A. celebrano la buona notizia della nascita di una nuova banca, la prima dalla fine del 2009, i banchieri centrali e gli economisti riuniti a Jackson Hole, Wyoming, ci avvertono che la crescita dell'economia U.S.A. potrebbe continuare a essere anemica per ancora un decennio.  Secondo Carmen Reinhart The American economy could experience painfully slow growth and stubbornly high unemployment for a decade or longer as a result of the 2007 collapse of the housing market and the economic turmoil that followed, (...)
Ms. Reinhart’s paper drew upon research she conducted with the Harvard economist Kenneth S. Rogoff for their book “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly,” published last year by Princeton University Press. Her husband, Vincent R. Reinhart, a former director of monetary affairs at the Fed, was the co-author of the paper.
The Reinharts examined 15 severe financial crises since World War II as well as the worldwide economic contractions that followed the 1929 stock market crash, the 1973 oil shock and the 2007 implosion of the subprime mortgage market.
In the decade following the crises, growth rates were significantly lower and unemployment rates were significantly higher. Housing prices took years to recover, and it took about seven years on average for households and companies to reduce their debts and restore their balance sheets. In general, the crises were preceded by decade-long expansions of credit and borrowing, and were followed by lengthy periods of retrenchment that lasted nearly as long.
“Large destabilizing events, such as those analyzed here, evidently produce changes in the performance of key macroeconomic indicators over the longer term, well after the upheaval of the crisis is over,” Ms. Reinhart wrote.
Ms. Reinhart added that officials may err in failing to recognize changed economic circumstances. “Misperceptions can be costly when made by fiscal authorities who overestimate revenue prospects and central bankers who attempt to restore employment to an unattainably high level,” she warned.
Several scholars here cautioned that it was premature to infer long-term economic woes for the United States from the aftermath of past crises.