True. They do keep insisting that what we are experiencing was a "recession" and is now a "recovery" in a normal business cycle.  Almost all of the gains since 2009Q1 have gone to the financial sector. But that is a result of ZIRP and QE, not of "expansionary consolidation", and we - at ET at least - know that what we have been experiencing is not a recession. It is the beginning of a decade(s?) long unwind of debt built up since 1970. But "mainstream" economics has never accepted that debt matters and rejected Fisher's Debt Deflation Theory of Great Depressions. Worse, we have learned how to "extend and pretend" and have largely avoided writing down debt that cannot be paid, at least from the proceeds of the investments that were the objects of that debt.

If only the holders of wealth agreed with mainstream economics that debt doesn't matter we could write down the bad debt and be one step closer to actual recovery. But to them it is the only thing that matters. They just don't want it in their economic theories.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."