Never let it be said that economists are an optimistic bunch; we have a tendency to look for the downside in statistics, looking for reasons to scale things back to suggest that there is worse to come. There are of course exceptions to all rules. As we ended what should have been a second good year wringing our hands, buffeted by the economic malaise of the European Union, the sputtering economic recovery in the US and the slowing down of growth and exports in Asia, we are looking at 2012 and thinking that there might be worse to come. As some of you may have guessed from previous musings about the global economy, I lean towards the Keynesian approach to economic policy. If you are in a recession or just coming out of one, the last thing that the economy needs is a policy that chokes off growth. Yet this is exactly what has happened in Europe and to a large extent in the US.
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