To be sure, it would be unwise to attribute all of this divergence in performance to budgetary policy.
But the divergence in performance is striking on a range of measures.
So the divergence in performance may widen, says Mr Swensen.The opportunities for venture capital may be greater than they were.
"There's a huge divergence in performance in this economy between the home-building sector, which is terrible, and everything else, which seems to be doing O.K.," said David Kelly, an economic adviser at Putnam Investments.
Analysts suggested there was an increasing divergence in performance between Wall Street activities like trading and investment banking and more traditional retail lending.
Finally, the author interviewed the then-current chief executive of Kroger, Lyle Everingham, to understand the divergence of performance between the two companies.
According to David Swensen, who runs Yale University's Endowment Fund, the divergence in performance of professional investors is already greater in venture capital than in any other asset class.
European banks have higher debt-to-equity ratios than American ones and have struggled to win the confidence of bond investors (see article).Old-world envyThere was bound to be some divergence in performance between American and European banks after the crisis.
This divergence in performance is caused in part by selection bias in the access to foreign markets, and in part by accumulation of localized knowledge.
