Quote of the day: Richard Posner on the state of the economy

We simply cannot responsibly gauge the pace of the recovery. Nor is it even clear whether we are better off with a fast recovery or a slow one. A fast recovery could create an acute risk of dangerously high inflation. A slow recovery could greatly increase the size of the federal deficit, threatening all sorts of economic and political harms, with eventual unacceptable inflation only one of them. I am particularly concerned with the danger of social and political turmoil if high unemployment and related economic pathologies persist. We are now in the third year of a depression. The economic crisis continues to occupy center stage despite all the other news assailing us.

Am glad that the prolific Posner is returning to blog at the Atlantic.  Boy is he a one-man-writing-machine!  BTW, I wonder if his economics colleagues at Chicago have resumed talking with him :)  In case you are wondering what I am talking about, here is the New Yorker piece.