Typically, sir, during any recession period, one of the major players in the economy, which would be government, can actually help by boosting spending or reducing taxes to kick-start the economy.
Just in response to your question whether it's a theory or a reality, the International Monetary Fund actually in its annual publication of “Fiscal Monitor”, which looks at the fiscal situation in different countries, has a measure that shows how much fiscal drag exists for each country. Even in the most recent publication of “Fiscal Monitor” that it released in October, it shows for Europe and North America still there is a bit of a fiscal drag.
Even now at the end of the thing there is still a fiscal drag, and that fiscal drag started very early on, about 2010, and continued. So that's one of the factors.