Major recessions are characterized by something novel

Thanks for the excellent article. This parallels nicely with Nassim Taleb's work on black swans, how statistical knowledge fails us when unpredictable extreme events are present.

I recently attended a talk by an economist who advised Greenspan during the housing run-up, and I was disappointed that he didn't cover the limits of knowledge: he stated things got worse due to declining housing prices, which is a symptomatic treatment of the problem. Hopefully this kind of deeper analysis will gain traction.

the soft sciences need to get over empiricism. You can not have empirical proof of anything in situations where a control is impossible. social/economic theories are either deductive or abductive, neither of which is falsifiable.