We seem to be returning to the economic and social configuration of pre-New Deal America, when unions were weak, booms confined to the wealthiest fifth of the population, and Americans entrenched behind barriers of race and ethnicity.
Europe's recovery is looking ropey; Japan's is still weak; and the boom in other Asian economies is itself largely based on exporting to America.
Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard and the National Bureau of Economic Research, raises another possibility: maybe recoveries that follow longer booms have weaker job growth initially because companies postponed restructuring during the boom.
But Europe's baby boom was weaker than the American version and its fertility rate fell further and faster after it.
Quoting Goldman Sachs, he assures us that less government spending means easier money, a weaker currency and a boom in export and investment.
Saudi Arabia is the only large producer with spare capacity; if anything, it pushed up production this year.All told, the case that speculators drove the commodity boom is weak.
India's hiring and firing laws also explain why the growth in manufacturing has been weak compared with the boom in services, which are not covered by the same rules.The OECD's indicator of product-market regulation (ie, the extent of state ownership, the red tape involved in setting up a business, and barriers to international trade and investment) again puts India at the bottom of the class.
Employers hired almost three times as many workers in August as economists had forecast, adding to evidence that an Australian mining boom is offsetting weaker domestic demand.
Another slump on Wall Street or a spike in mortgage rates would hurt the Rove battle plan for victory in 2004 far more than a boom from a weaker dollar would help it.Given that the dollar was already falling, and is set to fall further, with no change in the official rhetoric, it seems odd to take these risks.
The first one was the 1920s, where there was a roaring stock boom with a weaker economy.
