Thursday, May 26, 2011

It's all in your head

The Newsweek author responsible for the article "Stuck in a Post-Crisis Gloom" first attempts to summarize what "abetted" the Great Recession without mentioning banks, sub-prime lending, deregulation, over-leveraging, or credit default swaps. Instead he blames consumer overspending. As for the recovery, he says,
The greatest barrier to recovery now could be psychology—stubborn gloom—which conditions household and business spending decisions. There is a curious role reversal. Foolish optimism led to the financial crisis and recession by assuming things would work out for the best. Now, reflexive pessimism weakens growth by ignoring good news or believing it can’t last.
A startling hypothesis: The public caused the recession and now the public prevents recovery.

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