Crazy things are happening in the world economy. In Europe and Japan, interest rates have turned negative, something long thought impossible. In the U.S., workers’ productivity is improving at the feeblest five-year rate since 1982. China is a confusing welter of slumping growth and asset bubbles.
Through it all, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen practices the central banker’s art of draining the drama from any situation. She insists that conditions are returning to normal, albeit slowly. Her favored approach, “data dependence,” is nonpredictive and noncommittal, like finding your way in the dark by pointing a flashlight at your toes.
Lawrence Summers, the Harvard economist who almost got Yellen’s job, has no patience for such patience. Since losing out to Yellen in 2013, he’s been jetting around the world—from Santiago to St. Louis to Florence, Italy—to argue that the world economy is in much worse shape than central bankers understand .... http://www.bloomberg.com
