Forever Is a Long Time

The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve Bank say we're on the (very) slow road to recovery but Krugman begs to differ:

I’ve had a couple of conversations lately with people who follow politics and public affairs, but aren’t that close to the economic discussion -- and I’ve discovered that there are two comforting delusions still out there.

Delusion #1 is that we’re on the road to recovery, just more slowly than we’d like; to be fair, the White House keeps saying this.

But it’s not at all true. GDP is growing below potential; employment, even if you focus just on private employment, is growing more slowly than the working-age population. If you ask how long it will take us to return to, say, 5 percent unemployment on the current track, the answer is forever.