‘Protracted’ crisis has its own anomalies

Although no two business cycles are alike, most share some common characteristics.

The interest-rate-sensitive sectors of the economy — housing and manufacturing — tend to lead on the way up and the way down, for obvious reasons. Inflation ebbs during the recession and in the early stages of the recovery. Credit creation drives the upswing.

The recovery from the financial crisis has been different all around, just as Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff predicted in their 2009 book, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.