State of Business: The Puzzled Economy

When asked to characterize the present state of the economy—is it good? will it get worse?—the men who are closest to it take refuge in jargon. Economist George Cloos of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank prefers that ripe-sounding phrase "high-level stagnation." Swift & Co. Economist Willard Arant calls it "high-level stability." Professor J. Keith Butters of the Harvard Business School thinks that the economy is in "a sidewise movement" after "an inadequate recovery." One top corporate economist calls the present economy "a rolling kind of thing"; another figures it is in "a sputtering phase"; and still another calls it...