From a certain economic standpoint, the US economy actually has discounted itself over the past few years, possibly permanently. How? In the years leading up t

From a certain economic standpoint, the US economy actually has discounted itself over the past few years, possibly permanently. How? In the years leading up to it, we'd been enjoying a nice steady 5% increase per year in the total amount money changing hands (NGDP) each year of before the recession hit. When that happend, economic growth and inflation both stagnated, and since GDP is calculated by subtracting inflation from NGDP. We've seen the economy fall 10 percentage points below trend over the last three years. So compared to what we would have expected in 2007, we actually are about 10% off. Permanently? This is debatable, from what I've seen, countries don't usually catch up to pre-recession trendlines after a recovery, but it could certainly happen.