During the 1990s, U.S. economic growth by far outstripped that of the other major industrial economies.

U.S. economic growth in the 1990s has vastly outstripped that of the other components of the world economy's industrial core.

But if you hang out with the professional forecasters and builders of economic models, you hear a very different story. They are impressed by how small the recession of 2001 has been in terms of lost output, how rapid productivity growth has been throughout the recession...