‘This sucker’s going down” was George W Bush’s pithy description of the United States’ economy when the financial crisis of late 2008 threatened to bring down every bank on Wall Street.
Disaster was averted by concerted international cooperation of a sort never seen before and, by the middle of last year, the world’s biggest economy seemed to be on the mend. Factories started to hum again, shares rallied sharply and growth resumed.
The US seemed to be showing its traditional resilience. That judgment now appears premature. The latest US economic data has been poor. Traditionally, the US’s flexible labour market has meant job creation after recession has been robust. This time it was weak even when output was growing strongly in late 2009 and 2010. Recently, it went into reverse.
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