We don’t know how much of banking profits in recent years were illusory and should not have been booked as GDP. In fact, it would not be a big surprise if - eventually - we go back and mark down our true production of goods and services in 2007 by 2 or even 5 percent. In this sense, we face a statistical situation similar to that of the Soviet Union at its demise - once they figured out that all their military production had no real value, they had to reduce measured GDP sharply.
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Simon Johnson on the Economics of Vilification, via Baselinescenario.com (via master-of-none) I am curious: what are the consequences of admitting that much of the wealth created in the last bubble didn’t just disappear, but was never there to begin with? |
