Bruce Greenwald on Structural Imbalances in the Economy

Bruce Greenwald likes to say that he is constituted todisagree with everybody about everything, and he was true to his word at therecent Hyman P. Minksy Conference in New York. Taking immediate exception withthe virtually unanimous characterization of the economic crisis as abalance-sheet recession, Greenwald, a professor of finance at ColumbiaUniversity, argued that, far from being unusual, balance-sheet recessions canin fact be found at the heart of almost all business cycles.

The upshot of Greenwald’s talk was that, although we aretechnically out of recession, troubling structural imbalances remain andcontinue to drag down growth and employment.