SC&RA COMMENT
INTERNATIONAL
ANDSPECIALIZED TRANSPORT
■
APRIL 2015
57
One of the more increasingly difficult headlines to
deny among global economic leaders is: America
is Back. Not that this caption doesn’t come with its
fair share of examination, or even resentment but,
when you look around the world, it’s hard tomake a case for any
country having snapped back from the financial crisis of 2008 to
2009better than theUSA.
Governments around the world are steadily coming to this
conclusion, supportedby statements like the onePresident Barack
Obama made earlier this year in his annual State of the Union
address: “Since 2010, America has put more people back to work
thanEurope, Japan, and all advanced economies combined.”
The numbers support his claim. The US economy has
generated an average of 250,000 jobs a month in the last year,
with anunemployment rate sitting around 5.6%– its lowest since
2008. Eight of the tenmost valuable companies in the world are
based in America and, against the euro, the dollar has exceeded
an11-year high.
But herein lies a lesson that could be, and perhaps should
be, examined with as much emphasis as any of these headlines.
Indeed the USA is rallying compared to much of the rest of
the world. What is also happening, however, just beneath the
headlines, could remindnations and economies around theworld
that within a global economic co-op of sorts, such aswe are living
in today, one country’s growth doesn’t mean another country’s
gain. In the case of America it doesn’t even necessarily suggest
order andbalance at home.
Although job growth is up, manufacturing is alive again,
energy independence is the buzz phrase of the day and exports
spill from the county’s ports and runways in ever-increasing
amounts, America isn’t necessarily thriving in a way that nations
COMMENT
JoelMDandrea
around the world should be scrambling to replicate. This should
serve as a reminder that rising from the global recession for any
country requires an effort that goes well beyond the first few
surface layers.
The USA, despite its current prominence on the world
economic stage, is facing some serious long-term challenges.
When merged, wealth disparity, technology gaps, educational
disproportion and a host of social and internal economic
deficiencies paint a slightlydifferent picture of success.
Some experts warn that America is merely winning the “least
ugly” award among nations struggling to recover worldwide. The
5.6% unemployment rate looks great on paper, but the supply of
labour is tighteningmostly because somany people have stopped
looking for work. In addition, much of the employment in the
USA is either landing inupper- or lower-income professions, with
widespread unemployment still shackling the middle class. And
while the rich continue to grab slices of a “pie that’s not growing,”
living standards in the middle and lower class are eroding. On
Wall Street, bond yields (i.e. interest rates) are falling again. The
yieldon 10-year treasury bonds, whichbriefly got to 3% last year,
is back down to 1.8 %, close to historic lows. And stock prices
have littleheadroom left.
The lesson to be learned here by America and the rest of the
world is that economic success, to date, relies on flexibility and a
willingness to learn frommistakes. True economic recovery only
results from a consideration for themany layers that exist beneath
the headlines, and the development of a model that “lifts all
ships.” If theUS canmanage to do this amid its current “success,”
it will not only recover what was lost in the last seven years, but
it will create a blueprint that the rest of the world can feel
confident reproducing.
■
Lessons learned in recovery
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