Flatter and flatter

With the economy more sluggish than predicted, could we be in a long recession?

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30th October, 2010

That another long recession started in 2007 can't be ruled out. In more than a third of the past 150 years, our economy - measured as gross domestic product per person - has been flat or falling for periods of five or more years. Although most of these times of "stagnation" were in the first 100 years, two long recessions have occurred in the past 50 years: the 10 or so years that followed the wool-price crash in 1966, and the seven or so years of the Rogernomics recession from 1986. Are we entering another one? When everyone decided in 2009 that a second Great Depression was not going ...

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