Baum - "Working Girl" Big Idea Needed for 1990s Redux:

Caroline Baum

“The U.S. economy remains almost comatose....The current slump already ranks as the longest period of sustained weakness since the Great Depression....Once- in-a-lifetime dislocations...will take years to work out. Among them: the job drought, the debt hangover, the defense-industry contraction, the (banking) collapse, the real estate depression, the health-care cost explosion and the runaway federal deficit.” That’s how Time magazine described the dismal state of the U.S. economy -- in September 1992. The passage has been making the rounds in financial circles, a token reminder that today’s pessimism -- the forecast of a “lost decade” for U.S. employment by Pimco CEO Mohamed El-Erian, for example -- may turn out to be too extreme.

Mohamed El-Erian

Almost before that Time article reached the recycling bin, the U.S. economy was humming again. Real gross domestic product rose 4.3 percent, both in the fourth quarter of 1992 and on a year-over-year basis -- and for the rest of the decade America never looked back. Read more here:

Baum - "Working Girl" Big Idea Needed for 1990s Redux: