Compliments are in order for New York Times financial columnist (and CNBC host) Andrew Ross Sorkin for an in-depth and thoughtful economic piece in the Times’ Sunday Magazine:

President Obama Weighs His Economic Legacy

Note, however, that this is on the Wall of Shame, rather than Fame. That’s because of a fatal flaw in the assumptions underlying what is otherwise a great piece of reporting. It’s clear throughout that both Sorkin and President Obama are stuck in the 20th century. Those were heady times, when the world was our oyster. It seemed we could grow forever; we’d not yet stretched our economic rubber band so far past limits to growth that it would clearly break, or snap back with such ferocity as to be extraordinarily painful.