The Big Shift

In recent months, I’ve repeatedly made the point that the financial crisis was a symptom, not a cause. Innovation was weaker than expected, private sector job growth outside of healthcare was virtually nonexistent, while real wages and real stock values showed little gains from the late 1990s to the end of 2007, when the recession supposedly started. Most distressingly, stock prices for the nation’s innovative sectors, biotech/pharma and information technology, showed a sharp plunge in real terms from 1998 to 2007.

Now there’s a new report out today from Deloitte’s Center for the Edge which provides additional confirmation that the underlying problems extended well beyond the financial sector, and started well before the housing bubble.