“The man who predicted the crash of 2008 thinks energy and heavy manufacturing have the potential to fuel an economic boom not seen since the 1950s and 1960s. Photo courtesy of Jim R. Bounds/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
Paul Solman: In 2005, Charles Morris became convinced that a debt crash was inevitable. In 2006, he began his 10th book to make and explain his prediction. In 2007, he delivered the manuscript, and at the beginning of 2008, Public Affairs Books published “Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash,” which received almost no notice at all until The Economist magazine wrote about it in March. Six months after that, the deluge.
What’s remarkable is how well Morris’ analysis of the crash, written beforethe crash, holds up half a decade after it. So when I saw that he was calling his newest book “Comeback,” I felt obliged to take a look.
I’ll let him take it from here.
Charles Morris: It’s the best-kept secret in the economics media: The United States is on the brink of a period of solid, long-term growth rivaling that of the 1950s and 1960s. It is not a finance-driven, self-destructive boom, like the 2000s’ housing bubble. No, the new economy will be durably grounded in energy and heavy manufacturing, even though it will take several years to come to full fruition.
Evidence? Dow Chemical has commenced a $4 billion development in new plastics manufacturing in Texas, for example, that will start coming on stream in 2015 and be fully operational only in 2017, but it will be productive for a very long time. This will be a growth cycle with staying power.
Why haven’t you heard about the boom? Official economic forecasters, like the International Monetary Fund and the Congressional Budget Office, simply have not factored America’s emerging new economy into their forecasts. Instead, they still see us limping along at an average of 2 to 2.5 percent real (after inflation) growth to the farthest horizon — a hobbled, aging power, borne down by debts and deficits, shorn of its old bounce-back vigor, tottering along just fast enough to stave off out-and-out stagnation.
There is no question that the financial crash has left deep economic scars. But the fundamentals will turn in America’s favor and when they do, annual GDP growth should kick back up to at least the 3.3 percent average real growth rate that has prevailed since 1950. That’s far from a startling forecast for a recovery, but even at that level, the budget problems that have so paralyzed official Washington will shrink rapidly in the rear-view mirror as tax receipts grow, making debts and deficits shrink. The seemingly crushing post WWII debt — 120 percent of GDP — quickly dropped from the radar screens with growth in the 3-4 percent range in the 1950s. So what are the positive portents?
The Energy Boom Is Already Here…”
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