, Columnist
Economists Turn a Blind Eye to Historical Data
To get the right view of post-recession recoveries, you have to look at debt-induced crises. Why are the experts ignoring that?
More shadows than light.
Photographer: John Taggart/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Economists can’t seem to help themselves.
One might think that after they failed to anticipate the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, they learned to step back and look at the big picture. Instead, we're seeing the same blind spot: a pre-crisis dependence on the wrong data set of post-World War II recessions, which led to the biggest blunder in economic history.