For much of modern history, even the richest nations have been subject to big perennial upswings and crashes in commercial activity almost as fixed as the four seasons.
Hiring and investment crest and fall into a contraction as consumer confidence wanes and spending craters.
Sales fall, bankruptcies and unemployment rise.
But a brigade of academic economists and prominent voices on Wall Street are asking if the unruly business cycle they learned in school, and witnessed in practice, has fundamentally morphed into a tamer beast.
Rick Rieder, who manages about $3 trillion in assets at the investment firm BlackRock, is one of them.
Persons:
Rick Rieder
Locations:
BlackRock