AMERICA THE BOASTFUL

Only a few years ago pundits were sure that the United States was losi ng to Asia and Europe and had to emulate their more state-directed eco nomies to remain competitive. Now the conventional wisdom is that Amer ica is number one and that the rest of the world should adopt its more laissez-faire approach. In fact, neither caricature is right. Asia wa s booming and now it is slumping, but it will be back. Europe's underl ying ossification will persist. But most important, while the U.S. eco nomy is in a period of robust growth, nothing fundamental has changed. Its long-run growth rate has not accelerated, productivity has not ri sen, and the structural unemployment rate has fallen by one percentage point at most. Come the next recession, all this triumphalism will se em silly.