Closure, on schedule

CBO assumes that any gap between actual GDP and potential GDP that remains at the end of the short-term (two-year) forecast will close during the following eight years.

- CBO

On the first of March 2010, under the title The Trillion Dollar Gap, Mark Thoma showed this graph of real and potential GDP:

Here is where things stand today, some seven years later:

The trillion dollar gap has just about closed -- not by bringing real GDP up, but by bringing potential GDP down.