Stagnant thinking

摘要

Even before the financial crisis, there was a lurking suspicion that bubbles were the only way listless rich economies could keep growth up and unemployment down. "Recession-plagued nation demands new bubble to invest in," joked the Onion, a satirical newspaper, in 2008. In a speech last month Larry Summers, an economist at Harvard University, gave the idea new credibility when he suggested that the rich world might be suffering from "secular stagnation". He joins a growing rank of economists worrying that advanced economies will keep inflating bubbles in a doomed attempt to resurrect growth.