In Praise of Animal Spirits by Rich Karlgaard, Publisher of Forbes Over New Year's, at Renaissance Weekend, I found myself sweating out Christmas eggnog in a hotel hot tub with Alan Blinder, the former Fed vice-chairman and adviser to President Clinton. Yet looking at those numbers, Blinder can't find the computer's and Internet's contributions to productivity. MIT's Robert Solow famously declared that computers could be found everywhere in the economy except in the productivity numbers. Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley echoes this view.
Productivity is on the march everywhere.
American factories, many at death's door only a decade ago, have roared back. From T shirts to trucks, we are the world's most efficient producers. Give credit to ERP software. On the marketing front, American brands have colonized the world. Thank satellite TV and the Internet for spreading the English language.