I think Japan’s “Lost Decade” is illustrative when it comes to dilatory governmental involvement and half measures. [/quote]
Agreed. Personally, I think the odds of coming out of this Repression and averaging 3% annual GDP growth (real) over the following decade are not materially different from zero. But I guarantee that’s the bill of goods we’ll be sold: “We just need to get out of this situation and it’s back to the races!!” Ain’t gonna happen. There’s too much debt to pay down. Essentially, we front-loaded a bunch of “fake” debt-induced GDP during the middle of this decade. If we’re LUCKY, we’ll average 1.5% annual real GDP growth between 2010 and 2020. Which wouldn’t qualify as a “Lost” Decade, but rather a “Sub-par But Could Have Been Much Worse Give the Prior Excesses” Decade. There is almost NOTHING that the government can do to really improve our limited prospects for GDP growth over the following decade. The only thing they can have much influence over is the base from which such growth starts (that is, how deep this Repression turns out to be), and even that’s a bit of a crap shoot.
