A front-page Times news article reports: "In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the nation's finance industry shrank severely — and remained in a humbled state for most of the next four decades. The economy boomed in this period, with no major financial crises and less income inequality than in recent decades."
What are they talking about? JFK got elected in 1960 complaining about the slow economic growth of the Eisenhower era. And what about the 1970s? Is the Times telling us that they were an economic boom? That is not how the Times covered it back when it was happening. Even if there had been a 40-year economic boom, the notion that it was attributable to a humbled and shrunken financial industry, rather than, say, the post-World War II Pax Americana or the population growth of the baby boom or the Kennedy tax cuts or various other reasons is highly questionable. What's the policy lesson the Times wants us to learn from this claim? That if we'd just put some more banks out of business and bankers out of work, the economy would really boom for 40 years?