Growth Is Gangbusters, but Some Economists Are Still Warning about ‘Secular Stagnation’

When Harvard economist Larry Summers resurrected the Depression-era phrase “secular stagnation” in 2013, it caught on quickly because the world economy’s convalescence from the global financial crisis was still agonizingly slow. Things really did feel stagnant. (“Secular” to economists means long-term, as opposed to cyclical. It has nothing to do with irreligion.)

But here we are at the end of 2017, with a strong, synchronized upturn in global economic growth, and Summers is still talking up secular stagnation. He was a headliner at a conference in New York on Dec. 15 sponsored by the Secular Stagnation Project of the George Soros-supported Institute for New Economic Thinking. The conference also featured Adair Turner, former chairman of the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority, and a number of economists from such places as Brown University, Dartmouth College, Northwestern University, and London School of Economics.