A Bloomberg reporter, going through years of economic projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has found that, over time, the office has grown less optimistic with each major economic shock.

The reporter reached this conclusion after looking at CBO projections for potential gross domestic product (GDP) (how much the economy is capable of producing if it makes full use of all resources, including workers, without creating inflation) from the years 2006 on. What he found was that major economic shocks, such as the Great Recession, create a sort of scarring effect, whereby estimates for what the country could conceivably achieve get lower and lower each time the boat is rocked. Bloomberg noted, too, that despite the CBO continuously setting its expectations lower, the economy has tended to come in lower still, which leads the CBO to set further expectations even lower. In other words, the CBO could be viewed as remarking to the economy, "I didn't think you could disappoint me any further than this, yet you continue to surprise me." The reporter noted that if the 2006 report's projections for the economy held, standards of living would be substantially higher and social safety net programs would be easier to fund.

However, Bloomberg pointed out that sometimes the CBO is too pessimistic, such as in the period of 2018, 2019 and the early 2020s, when the economy was well above the CBO's initial expectations. Given that inflation was very low during this period, Bloomberg said, the economy was actually operating under-capacity during this period, meaning that there was still much more room to grow.