Slow Recovery

Richard Posner and Gary Becker account for the sluggish economic recovery with reference to the housing market, mounting public debt, fear of regulation and the E.U. debt crisis. “Uncertainty is an enormous retardant to economic recovery, and the Administration could do more to allay it by, for example, giving up on banker bashing. For in the face of uncertainty—in the sense of risk that cannot be quantified and thus embedded in a cost-benefit analysis—both producers and consumers tend to freeze.”