Are you ready for an economic boom?

Fiscal stimulus at this juncture may help the Main Street recovery gain momentum and actually exceed expectations. The last two economic recessions have been followed by broken recoveries. Growth returned, but unlike the recoveries that followed recessions in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, it failed to meaningfully exceed economists’ expectations. I don’t believe that this is due to better forecasting, but a failure to allow economic momentum to build on itself. More broadly, the experience of the past 20 years has been that forecasted growth represents a ceiling for reality. The experience prior to that was that recessions aside, forecasted growth acted as a floor for reality. My guess, my bet, is that we get back to that.