But a measure of anxiety remained about the standards that would apply in the new economic and monetary entity. This source of anxiety came to the surface in summer 1997, when the intermediate-maturity yields paid by those core countries which had reached complete alignment started to rise in sync [see Chart 1b and 1c].
The tension between labor market and spending data is not a recent phenomenon. Throughout the recovery period, forecasters have consistently overestimated both actual and potential GDP growth while underestimating the rate of job creation and the pace of decline of the unemployment rate (table 1).