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The federal government runs a persistent deficit and that's OK, especially over the business cycle, since running large deficits during recessions is a way to shorten them.

Mark says that businesses like his can be loyal to workers and take long-term decisions, riding through the peaks and troughs of the business cycle.

But a brigade of academic economists and prominent voices on Wall Street are asking if the unruly business cycle they learned in school, and witnessed in practice, has fundamentally morphed into a tamer beast.

Her Advanced Placement economics course covers such topics as supply and demand, monetary policy, inflation, unemployment, gross domestic product, the peaks and recessions of the business cycle, fiscal policy and the Federal Reserve.

Two consecutive quarters of contraction is a common definition of recession, though economists on the eurozone business cycle dating committee use a broader set of data, including employment figures.