THE headquarters of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, looks out on a row of shops. These used to be thriving places, where people bought furniture and other household goods. But collapsing property prices, foreclosed homes and soaring unemployment, all effects of the recession which the NBER announced on December 1st 2008, have taken their toll. Many shops are now empty, with “For Rent” signs forlornly fastened to them.

But the misery stretches well beyond the recession, as our charts above make clear. Taking the decade between 2000 and 2009 as a whole, growth was slower than in previous decades. These figures, compiled by Christopher Wood, a former journalist with The Economist and now a strategist at CLSA, a Hong Kong-based investment group, provide stark reminders of various aspects of the poor performance the American economy demonstrated during the “noughties”. …