UNPRODUCTIVE. The central economic mystery of the last decade or so is how the economy's robust productivity growth has not translated into commensurately large wage increases (I discuss this further here). But as Dean Baker points out, the inexplicably bad good times may be ending: the Bureau of Labor Statistics is saying that productivity growth in the last quarter was...zero. 0. A goose egg. This country is so screwed. Oh, and here's Paul Krugman explaining why we're about to topple into a massive recession. I was at that conference and, later on, there was a panel asking how we can prevent the next recession. The four economists on the stage displayed a comforting unanimity in their responses: We can't.
--Ezra Klein
