Important shifts in the international economy and the growing influence of information technology translate into good news for America’s recovery, said a national columnist during a Tuesday keynote speech at the Mackinac Policy Conference.
Fareed Zakaria, editor-at-large of Time and a Washington Post columnist, offered historical perspective and presented a probable road map for America’s economic recovery.
Recovering from the crisis created from the housing and credit market bubbles has proven to be a formidable task, but the country’s history of resilience and global economic trends work in the favor of the U.S., Zakaria said.
For example, more countries participate in a truly global economic system, hyperinflation is a thing of the distant past and IT has leveled the playing field when it comes to access to information, he said.
Zakaria engaged the audience when he pointed out that if they had to give up their smart phones, iPads and other devices it would “put them back in the dark ages of 1990.”
“This revolution is still very recent and is still in its infancy,” he said.
One negative shift from the change in global forces is a growing time lag from the time a country’s GDP is restored and when jobs are reinstated.
After the downturn of 1990, the jobs did not come back for 15 months. The most recent downturn has an even more dramatic delay; jobs are not expected to return for 5
