Interesting graphs from The Economist magazine

Source: The Economist

An article in The Economist suggests that there is danger that the United States, Britain and the euro zone are in some danger of suffering now from a long stagnation that has dogged Japan for the pat two decades. Japan's stagnation, shown by the bottom right hand chart shown above, started with the bursting of a Japanese housing bubble. The Japanese GDP is, according to that chart, no greater today than it was 20 years ago. The top graph on the right indicates that all four regions had somewhat similar monetary policies after the crash reducing interest rates to zero or near zero, but that the United States did so faster than other economies. The United States economy some five years after the crash has grown more than any of the other three, but the Japanese experience shows the threat exists of long term future stagnation in spite of the growth for the past few years.

Republican party proposed recessionary fiscal policies (i.e. big budget cuts in the near term) and the lack of unified fiscal policies in Europe would seem to increase the risk of long term stagnation.