"Secular Stagnation" Is Progress, Now Can We Talk About the Trade Deficit?

Matt O'Brien has a nice piece presenting charts from Larry Summers (yes, the rest of us had made this point long ago) showing that estimates of potential GDP have dropped as the economy has remained weak since 2007. The point is that a temporary downturn can have lasting economic consequences. Unemployed workers lose skills and can become permanently unemployed. And, by having a long period of weak investment, the economy's capacity will be expanding less rapidly than would otherwise be the c...