The New York Times and the Economist rarely agree on economic outlooks but of late they have begun to converge. The graph below shows the problem:
The New York Time is calling this 21st century boom -> The Good Times that were Mostly a Mirage. In surprising agreement, the Economist is seeing red signals all over the US economy. And the Davos World Economic Forum sees a test for the Asian economies as the US and Europe slump. The high levels of personal debt as well as national deficits in the US really are the culprits. And so I vote for the NYTimes analysis – the good times were more than a fifth too stiff of a mirage.