Don’t look now, but the economy is growing faster than expected. In normal times, we’d even be growing at a normal rate — an annualized pace of 3%, very comfortable, nice and prosperous.
These are not normal times, though, and the policy choices in Washington can keep the recovery going or shut it down.
Signs of economic life http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/29/10539230-signs-of-economic-life
maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com
About a month ago, preliminary reports showed the U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 2.8% in the fourth quarter. The GDP numbers weren’t bad, necessarily, but they fell short of expectations. The revised data, published this morning, brought more encouraging news.
Gary Reber Comments: The poor performance related to the economy’s growth is no surprise. “The fact remains that we’re slowly crawling out of a ditch, and taking money out of the economy and ignoring high unemployment may very well push us backwards.” What is needed is leadership to create policies and programs to broaden ownership of productive capital simultaneously with the growth of the economy. We should be striving for 10 to 15 percent annual growth rates at a minimum. To achieve this will require serious investment in new productive capital formation. The Federal Reserve Bank should provide insured loans or loans directly to qualified corporations as investment capital. Federal Reserve Bank supported investments should be concentrated in areas of long-term productivity growth with the benefit of promoting the diffusion of advanced technology into civilian industries. The loans would be used to modernize technically backward industries and build new superautomated and computerized robotic factories. Where necessary the monies would be used for supplemental retraining of labor workers to qualify them for the new jobs created. Most important, the profits from the investments would be fully paid out to new capitalists owners––the corporate employees and other citizens. This would be a condition to receive the capital investment loans. The goal would be to create new capitalist owners simultaneously with the growth of the economy financed with Federal Reserve Bank support. The profits would represent wealth created by public capital invested in private corporations. The desired result would be to decrease, rather than increase, the existing concentration of productive capital ownership and thus economic power in the hands of the 1 percent. The credit mechanisms supported by the Federal Reserve Bank would not involve the expenditure of any tax money and would support profit-making businesses operated for the primary purpose of earning dividends for its stockholders, including the newly created capitalist owners. Businesses supported by such credit mechanisms would have a profit motive and operate with the requirement for efficiency imposed by a market economy. The goal would be to broaden the ownership of private corporations so as to make the interests of private industry more synonymous with the public interest and vice versa––while broadening private enterprise capitalism to include everyone in the society. Such policies and programs aimed at broadening productive capital ownership would foster extensive utilization of the most modern and efficient technological innovations and result in the revitalization of American free-enterprise capitalism mirrored in a strong growth-projected economy.
