Six Months Later: The Economy That Didn't Crash Won't Boom, Either

With the six-month commemoration of the Sept. 11 attacks, I checked in with Edward Leamer, professor of economics, management and statistics at the UCLA Anderson School of Business.

Shortly after Sept. 11, Leamer made a prescient call here that the attacks should not have a "material [negative] impact on the course of the economy."

If anything, it now seems the terrorist attacks (and of course, the reaction of American policymakers, business leaders and citizens) hastened the end of the recession rather than extending it, as many feared at the time. The latest evidence of recovery was provided by today's 0.2% drop in wholesale inventories, to their lowest level since January 2000, as well as separate reports on manufacturing by Federal Reserve banks in Kansas City and Chicago. ...