Mark Thoma, Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon says: “I expect one of the most significant developments of 2011 to be one I’d rather not see: deficit reduction. Recovery from recessions brought about by financial panics is notoriously slow, and I don’t expect this recovery to be an exception to that general rule, though I’d be happy to be wrong about this. Thus, rather than cutting the deficit, we need to take steps to increase the speed of the recovery or, at the very least, avoid doing things that will slow it down. If Congress had credibility, there would be no need to worry about the trade-off between helping the economy escape the recession and reducing the deficit.”