'Sustaining Recovery--Medium-term Prospects and Policies for the U.S. Economy'

Though recent market activity and housing reports give some warrant for optimism, United States economic growth was only 2.8 percent in the third quarter, and the unemployment rate is still very high. In their new Strategic Analysis, the Levy Institute's Macro-Modeling Team project that high unemployment will continue to be a problem if fiscal stimulus policies expire and deficit reduction efforts become the policy focus. The authors--President Dimitri B. Papadimitriou and Research Scholars Greg Hannsgen and Gennaro Zezza--argue that continued fiscal stimulus is necessary to reduce unemployment. The resulting federal deficits would be sustainable, they say, as long as they were accompanied by a coordinated and gradual devaluation of the dollar, especially against undervalued Asian currencies--a step necessary to prevent an increase in the current account deficit and ward off the risk of a currency crash.