Stephen Roach's twice-weekly column has some interesting things to say about productivity:
It all boils down to the essence of productivity enhancement -- whether efficiency gains are driven by synergies between human capital and technological innovation or by hard-nosed cost-cutting. The former is “good productivity” -- the stuff of rising prosperity and lasting improvements in a nation’s standard of living. The latter is “bad productivity” -- centered on strategies of downsizing that have the clear potential to lead to increasingly hollow enterprises and labor markets.
The basic gist of this piece is that any recovery we are seeing now will not have a lasting effect. The GDP for the second quarter was mostly buoyed by government spending refilling the arsenal after using munitions in the war on terrorism: "A 44% annualized surge in defense outlays accounted for fully 70% of the total increase in national output." He also has some not-so-nice things to say about the U.S. Current Account Deficit.
Stephen Roach never criticises political actions, he seems to be a fairly pure analyst of the economy. I've been keeping up with his columns so far this year, and he never disappoints. I can't help but notice journalists capitalizing on his ideas and writings without making any actual attributions. I think he's a trend creator in business journalism, not a follower.
If you like the ones I've linked to, the Morgan Stanley digest page links to all their daily squawk box-type reports. He usually writes on Monday and Friday, but there are some deviations from that including August 11.
Posted by nicole at August 10, 2003 10:39 PM