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Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson - Derek Thompson is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees business coverage for the website.
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He is a visiting research fellow at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget at the New America Foundation. Derek has also written for Slate, BusinessWeek, and the Daily Beast. He has appeared as a guest on radio and television networks, including NPR, the BBC, CNBC, and MSNBC.

Are US Consumers Really Over Leveraged?

By Derek Thompson
Dec 2 2009, 4:35 PM ET Comment

If there is one axiom of today's Pigovian pessimism it is the idea that after decades of decadent reliance on debt to goose up consumption, US consumers are structurally over leveraged. And that it may take a decade or more of pain to unwind the damage, during which time US consumption and GDP growth will be pitifully slow.



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