Pretty much. Its not possible to recover from in the near term because the only reason it hasn't been worse is the fact we've been having the FED use every policy tool it could think of.
Perhaps its time we admit that growth isn't a requirement to an ever-incrasing quality of life? And investigate the transition to steady state economies?
But no growth will make inequality much harder to digest. Noone minds inequality as much , as long as he is assured that his lot will improve some day.
Take that away and it's only a matter of time before things boil over.
It's hard to make a case for or against economic growth, when all the economic growth of the past 30 years has been shoveled into the gaping maw of the ruling class.
That said, I don't want a steady-state economy - not in the long term anyway (i.e. thousands of years). We should not exhaust our resources on Earth, of course, and could do a much better job there, but eventually our species should come to harness the power of galaxies, and that will require economic expansion.
"India’s output growth accelerated to 7.5% last quarter, putting it ahead of China as the world’s fastest-growing large economy."
To be fair, some of the data presented is faked, but it's in the ballpark. It'd be good if India and the developing world were all growing faster, but they're still coming along at a nice clip.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2014/11/secular-st...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/imf-fears-gl...