I Just Got Here, but I Know Trouble When I See It

By N. GREGORY MANKIW, CHRISTINA D. ROMER; TYLER COWEN; ROBERT H. FRANK; ROBERT J. SHILLER and RICHARD H. THALER
NYT

BELIEVE it or not, times are getting better.

At least that’s what the dry statistics keep telling us. Industrial production, G.D.P. — the kind of figures that Washington and Wall Street sweat over — suggest that the economy is on the mend.

Yet if we go beyond the Beltway and the Battery, to where most of American life is lived, the numbers don’t always add up. Yes, the Great Recession officially ended in 2009. But many millions of Americans are out of work or cannot find full-time jobs. Home prices are wobbly. The foreclosure crisis drags on. And the Occupy movement’s campaign against “the 1 percent” has underscored the ravages of income inequality.

It was, as always, a year of ups and downs in business. Washington said the nation’s AAA rating was safe, but Standard & Poor’s concluded that it wasn’t. Europe insisted that its currency was sound, but investors worry that it isn’t. Wall Street seemed perpetually on edge. After so many wild days, the American stock market ended 2011 about where it began.

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