Soviet America

Simon Johnson knows how to ruin a Monday:

We don’t know how much of banking profits in recent years were illusory and should not have been booked as GDP.  In fact, it would not be a big surprise if - eventually - we go back and mark down our true production of goods and services in 2007 by 2 or even 5 percent.  In this sense, we face a statistical situation similar to that of the Soviet Union at its demise - once they figured out that all their military production had no real value, they had to reduce measured GDP sharply.

(hat tip: MR)