In an astonishing makeover of America’s recent economic history Summers proposed that for at least two decades American economic growth had been on weak foundations. To achieve no more than a “normal” rate of growth it had depended on “abnormal” financial bubbles. Looking back over recent decades, Summers asked in a subsequent speech, “[C]an we identify any sustained stretch during which the economy grew satisfactorily with conditions that were financially sustainable? Perhaps one can find some such period, but it is very much the minority, rather than the majority, of the historical
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