Brad DeLong — Will the U.S. Economy Boom Over the Next Four Years?

The very sharp Ken Rogoff predicts a boom over the next four years: "The biggest missing piece... is business investment, and if it starts kicking in... output and productivity could begin to rise very sharply.... You don’t have to be a nice guy to get the economy going.... It is far more likely that after years of slow recovery, the US economy might at last be ready to move significantly faster..."

I really can't see it as likely.

Grasping Reality
Will the U.S. Economy Boom Over the Next Four Years?
Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

Ramanan — Fiscal Conservatism, Weak International Trade Performance And Income Inequality Not Good For The U.S. Economy

The Levy Institute has a new Strategic Analysis publication titled Fiscal Austerity, Dollar Appreciation, And Maldistribution Will Derail The US Economy in which they identity three main structural characteristics of the economy of the United States that stand in the way of the recovery:

(1) the weak performance of net exports, (2) pervasive fiscal conservatism, and (3) high income inequality

They show that in their baseline scenario, if the projections of the Congressional Budget Office’s outlook hold, their model simulations imply that the private sector’s net lending would turn negative by the end of 2017 and hence the private sector would be in a financial deficit, which is not sustainable.....

The Case of Concerted Action

Fiscal Conservatism, Weak International Trade Performance And Income Inequality Not Good For The U.S. Economy

Ramanan