In many EU countries, GDP remains lower, or insignificantly above, pre recession levels.

On the one hand, we measure recovery by our success in regaining pre recession levels of growth, output, and employment.

More than 11 million additional jobs are needed to return the US to its pre recession employment level.

If employment began rising at this rate in 2010, it would take until 2015 before it reached its pre recession level.

From the trough of recessions, recovery to pre recession output levels took less than two quarters on average, and employment recovered within eight months.

Or believe the promises of the populist President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Or think about a return to the one party past in Mexico.

This pattern also characterizes the current recovery, and recent data suggest that mismatches between the demand and supply of labor by industry are back to pre recession levels.

By 1950, the republic had fully surpassed pre war levels of industry and production.

In some of the tsunami affected countries, efforts were made to boost enrolment levels even beyond pre disaster levels.

Even before the current economic recession, unemployment in the Arab world was estimated at 14 the world s highest average outside sub Saharan Africa.

After ten years, Iraq s oil production has finally recovered to its pre war level.

From the trough of the recession, the economy recovered the lost jobs in eight months on average.

The build up of public debt in industrial countries (which was rising briskly well before the Great Recession pushed it to near unsustainable levels) reflects this kind of calculus.

Thus, the Turkish economy returned to its pre crisis levels in 2010.

But if nominal interest rates stay positive, while inflation is negative, then real interest rates may become too high for an economy in recession, causing recession to become more severe and prolonged.

In many advanced economies, real GDP remains lower than its pre crisis level.

It is imperative that our country's graduation be deferred until we return to pre tsunami levels of development.

While a global recession will be averted, a severe growth slowdown will not.

Even prior to the onset of the global recession, there were strong reasons to doubt the sustainability of China s growth paradigm.

Continuing to assume the resumption of pre crisis growth was necessary to justify postponing hard decisions.

The education system is based on four levels pre school, basic, secondary, and higher education.

Just a year ago, former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda attempted, despite a deep recession, to raise the consumption tax without monetary easing a strategy that could have brought only continued economic stagnation.

Goodhart concedes that banks risk weightings in the pre recession period were subject to political pressure and financial industry capture and manipulation.

In the US, real middle class incomes have not yet recovered to the levels attained before the last recession in 1991.

And all the lines of business that had been profitable before the downturn would become profitable once again.

While their personal wealth increased, living standards for everyone else either stagnated or, for lower income groups, declined.

At the same time, while consumer confidence is on the mend, it remains well below pre crisis readings.

Unfortunately, the Great Recession of 2008 2009 is far from being a normal global recession.

Unemployment is surging in many countries, even though we can detect the first signs of recovery from the recession.

The Fed would then cause a liquidity squeeze and so distort asset prices as to make much construction, sizable amounts of other investment, and some consumption goods unaffordable (and thus unprofitable to produce).

Even before the current economic recession, unemployment in the Arab world was estimated at 14 the world s highest average outside sub Saharan Africa. Among young people and recent graduates, the figure is more than double.

It is not often that the world finds itself facing the stagflationary risk of lower demand and lower supply at the same time.

CHICAGO Why did the household savings rate in the United States plummet before the Great Recession? Two of my colleagues at the University of Chicago, Marianne Bertrand and Adair Morse, offer an intriguing answer growing income inequality.

And that's what I did a few years ago when I took that five level hierarchy of needs pyramid and turned it into what I call the transformation pyramid, which is survival, success and transformation.

But it was responsible for allowing flawed expectations of a sharp recovery to pre crisis levels of output and consumption to persist.

A return to pre 2007 levels of macroeconomic and financial stability would support growth.

To be sure, it was based on unrealistically optimistic assumptions about the depth of the recession, the strength of the recovery, and the level at which unemployment would peak.

The level of real residential investment is still less than half its level before the recession began.

During this time, the magnitude of contraction will be significant, with roughly one quarter of all developing countries expected to cut expenditures below pre crisis levels.

Meanwhile, GDP in many European countries remains markedly below pre crisis levels.

A transitory rebound from such a hard fall is not surprising, and German output remains below pre crisis levels.

But the Phillips curve fared poorly in the 1970 s, when many countries experienced stagflation (high levels of both inflation and unemployment).

Spain s capacity to withstand an austerity cure that only sinks it deeper into recession must also have its limits.

An epic, financial crisis driven recession, such as the one we are still experiencing, is not a one year event.

There is no way to know whether the rate of growth of multifactor productivity will remain at its current level or will revert to the pre 2000 pace.