U.S. economy has grown bigger — and weaker — since 9/11
CBSN
Although the U.S. economy was officially in recession when the planes struck on 9/11, it bounced back quickly after the attacks. Growth slumped over the final months of 2001, but by January 2002 consumers and businesses had regained their nerve. Politicians and the press pointed to the rebound as evidence of America's resilience — a testament to the country's vaunted power of capitalist self-renewal.
Two decades later another threat, this one in the form of a virus crowned with spikes, would put tens of millions of Americans out of work virtually overnight, snuffing out the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. The economy has since regained its footing, yet any claim that we are now made whole rings false. Like the grueling slog that followed the 2008 financial crisis, this latest recovery only papers over existing fault lines: inequality, political dysfunction, systemic racism and, perhaps most worrying, a withering public belief (at least in some quarters) in the merits of democracy.Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.