Economy

A Case For Immodest GDP Growth

All in all, then, I expect noticeably stronger growth in overall activity this year than last. If I had to write down a forecast today, it would be pretty close to 4 percent. A rate of growth in that neighborhood…

By Douglas A. McIntyre
Published February 8, 2011, 9:56am ET · 2 min read

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All in all, then, I expect noticeably stronger growth in overall activity this year than last. If I had to write down a forecast today, it would be pretty close to 4 percent. A rate of growth in that neighborhood would result in continued net gains in employment and further reduction in the unemployment rate.

Jeffrey M. Lacker President Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond

Federal Reserve officials have begun to push even harder against the Ben Bernanke master plan to spend the entire $600 billion set aside for the process of quantitative easing. Bernanke’s most recent argument, or rather an extension of his old one, is that unemployment may change very little over the next two years. The drag on the economy will be irresistible, and the stimulus is essential he told the Press Club late last week.

Lacker looks at the problem and its solution that other way around. In his world, the trouble is nearly already past. A 4% GDP improvement mean more jobs no matter what. The fix to all economic issues is already made

Lacker tips his hate to the troubles with housing and ongoing credit problems with banks. He says very little about what becomes of the recovery if austerity at the federal level kills a huge amount of government spending. Any or all of these problems plus the long-term unemployment base of 6.3 million people are greater barriers to growth than he is willing to say.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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