The great economic malaise continues

The year 2015 has been a hard one all around. Brazil fell into recession. China's economy experienced its first serious bumps after almost four decades of breakneck growth. The eurozone managed to avoid a meltdown over Greece, but its near-stagnation has continued, contributing to what surely will be viewed as a lost decade. For the United States, 2015 is supposed to be the year that finally closed the book on the Great Recession that began back in 2008; instead, the US recovery has been middling.

Indeed, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde has declared the current state of the global economy the "new mediocre". Others, harking back to the profound pessimism after the end of World War II, fear that the global economy could slip into depression, or at least into prolonged stagnation.

In early 2010, I warned in my book Freefall, which describes the events leading up to the Great Recession, that without the appropriate responses, the world risked sliding into what I called a "great malaise". Unfortunately, I was right: We didn't do what was needed, and we have ended up precisely where I feared we would.