One explanation amongst others, for the weak recovery must be the indebtedness of the American Consumer. In the last 20 years the average industrial wage has stagnated relative to GDP. This may be good for corporate earnings but the flip side is that growing consumption has been paid for by the use of credit and not wages. Under- consumption and lack of demand is a real problem. Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me, the only solution to this, is to rebalance the economy by making consumers wealthier. If it won’t come about through wage rises (weak unions and government fiscal inertia) then how is the rebalancing going to happen. America does not have a large enough export market to pay for consumption, Monetarist policy is ineffective when real rates dip below zero and Quantitative Easing seems only to keep asset prices high without dealing with the actual debt. Deflationary times.