This Recovery Will Hurt Like Hell, Newsweek

Need a reason to feel good about life today?? Then read this article by Gregg Easterbrook.

Home prices keep falling, but productivity is rising fast. GDP grew 5.6 percent in the fourth quarter, yet unemployment remains stubbornly high. Inflation is nonexistent, while the consumer confidence index just rose to 55.9 from 53.6—whatever that means. Can't make sense of these economic indicators? Don't worry, because nobody else can, either.
Here is what you really need to know: a Sonic Boom is coming. It will be caused by globalization. And while globalization may be driving you crazy, it's just getting started. Thirty years ago, Shenzhen, China, did not exist; today, it has nearly 9 million residents, roughly the same as New York City. In a single generation, it has grown from a village of tar-paper shacks into an important urban center. It has become the world's fourth-busiest port, busier than Los Angeles and Long Beach combined. Never before has a great city been built so fast, nor a productive economy established from so little.

CLIMATE CHANGE WILL CHANGE EVERYTHINGDramatic economic change will happen at the same time as climate change. Either one would be a challenge in itself. Now, they're going to occur simultaneously, which will cause economic convulsions unparalleled by any event other than World War II. Winners are likely to be those in high-latitude regions. Yakutsk, Russia, located in Siberia just below the Arctic Circle, is currently home to the world's leading museum of woolly-mammoth fossils. But what if Siberia were to become a temperate expanse? The minerals and oil thought to lie beneath the permafrost could boost the global supply of commodities, not to mention Russia's national wealth.


The Boom Is Nigh
Gregg Easterbrook
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