>On Jan 24, 2008, at 2:34 PM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
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>>It's hard to believe, given the magnitude of the excesses and the
>>degree to which the economy is organized around consumption, that
>>this is not going to be a long hard fall.
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>It could just be a long slog - years of near-zero growth.
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The labor force grows by more than 1% per year. Even assuming no productivity growth, a zero GDP growth rate over four years would put the unemployment rate above 9%, the same as the trough of the 1974-75 recession.
Seth