6 I do not mean to suggest that the period that preceded the crisis was a golden age. It wasn't. Even during this seemingly enviable, secular period of prosperity, the U.S. recessions of 1990-91 and 2001 remind us that periodic, cyclical weakness occurs. The labor markets deteriorated during these downturns, and at great costs to many families and communities.
But these periodic deviations were accepted, in some sense, by the body politic. There were lessons to be learned, reforms to be implemented, and public and private practices to be improved upon. But the broad outlines of the growth experiment forged on, and were judged by most to be largely a success.