Now, what happened in the 17 years beginning with 1982? One thing that didn’t happen was comparable growth in GDP: In this second 17-year period, GDP less than tripled. But interest rates began their descent, and after the Volcker effect wore off, profits began to climb—not steadily, but nonetheless with real power. You can see the profit trend in the chart, which shows that by the late 1990s, after-tax profits as a percent of GDP were running close to 6%, which is on the upper part of the “normalcy” band. And at the end of 1998, long-term government interest rates had made their way down to
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