Sunny with a chance of rain: economists issue a mixed forecast for the nation's economy.

• Author: Kinder, Peri

The foremost question on the minds of most business leaders, from brash young startups to global powerhouses, is when the U.S economy will start gaining traction. The answer: Soon. But not very soon.

That's according to some of the nation's top economic thought leaders, who point to the national challenges and global trends that are tamping down economic growth.

An Economic Paradox

For more than 25 years, the U.S. economy enjoyed a long period of high-level returns on investments. Financial stability was taken for granted, and people started to seek out more precarious investments. And although there were several short-term recessions during the time leading up to the financial crisis of 2007-2008, these recessions were not enough to shake confidence in the country's financial system.

"The longer you have great stability, the longer you have things going well, the more risk-taking people become. Stability begets its own demise because stability leads to progressively more risk-seeking behavior, notably with debt," says Paul McCulley, chairperson of the Global Interdependence Center Society of Fellows. "Everything looked hunky-dory, and because it looked hunky-dory, economic agents, otherwise known as people, became more risk seeking."

Then, when the bottom fell out of the market, investors did just the opposite and became increasingly conservative, hoarding cash in expectation of an adverse event like a longer recession or even a depression. When injections of cash into the banking system failed to stimulate growth in the economy, and when people continued saving instead of spending, a liquidity trap was created.

"Everybody does the right thing, but collectively it has a paradoxically bad outcome. One person's spending is another person's income. Therefore if I save a little more from my income, it's important that you don't do the same thing at the same time," McCulley says. "If you have the same impulse that I do, we'd respectively destroy each other's income. ... That's been the backdrop for the last 30 years, and it changed dramatically five years ago."

The liquidity trap followed an event called a Minsky moment, which McCulley loosely translates as "when the stuff hits the oscillator big time." The Minsky moment that occurred in 2007 and 2008, also known as the financial crisis, wasn't just a momentary market adjustment, it was the beginning of a long period of economic disappointment.

One-Night-Stand Money

Both a Minsky moment and a...