Economists cautious about fiscal recovery
Published 4:46 pm Monday, April 30, 2012
Flanked by a dozen charts and graphs typical of any fiscal forum, economist Dave Wallace of the Washington Department of Employment Security last week relied on visuals and detailed analysis to describe the effect the recession has had on the state and on San Juan County.
San Juan Island’s Mark Anderson, founder of Strategic News Service and a frequent technology conference contributor, followed with big picture insights and strategy recommendations for the future.
But the real buzz in the room – economically speaking – started before the San Juan County Economic Development Council’s April 25 Economic Forecast Luncheon even began. It was delivered by realtors Steve and Sam Buck of Coldwell Banker.
“Thirty real estate deals are in escrow,” was Steve Buck’s economic recovery report. “The most at one time since August 2006,” chimed in Sam Buck, Jr., as the two joined a crowd of about 60 people checking in for lunch.
The informal “Buck Recovery Report” complemented the cautious optimism expressed by Wallace, the state economist, as he power-pointed his way through a comprehensive set of snapshots outlining (“but not predicting”) where the Washington state and San Juan County economies have been and appeared to be headed.
Wallace’s charts underscore why the 2007-2009 recession is called “The Great Recession:” Washington state lost 200,000 jobs (6.8 percent of all jobs in the state) and San Juan County’s percentage job loss was even greater, a 12 percent job loss. Reviewing recessions since 1976, Wallace concludes the current recovery is substantially slower than prior recessions, although recent Gross Domestic Product gains and a rising “index of leading indicators” may mean improvements will continue both nationally and in Washington.
The good news and the bad: manufacturing jobs in the state are leading the job recovery, but the hard-hit San Juan County construction industry, a mainstay in the past, is “barely coming back,” according to Wallace. But Anderson later noted that “permits are way up”, which could mean the housing market and construction will come back quicker than expected.
More good news for the state: Washington exports exceed imports and the gap between the two is increasing. Further, Washington, a relatively small state, ranks 5th in exports after Texas, California, New York and Florida, a nod to the likes of Boeing, Microsoft and agriculture, according to Wallace.
Displaying conference keynoter skills in a fast-paced and wide-ranging talk, Anderson raised provocative national, international and local issues, starting with the “most surprising” and even “astonishing” development that the U.S. will become energy self-sufficient in the near future – “within ten years and probably less.”
“It’s not very hard to save energy,” said Anderson, adding that energy self-sufficiency could lead to “big energy exports” in the future.
Anderson said that technology is an “exciting story” that makes Seattle attractive to both tech workers and tech companies who want to move to the region to take advantage of the Microsoft-fostered high-tech human resources market. He said that Seattle “is going to do great.”
Nationally and regionally, Anderson said “the future is bright,” partly because “we’re an inventing nation.” However, he said “we’ve got to stop giving away the intellectual property jewels” to countries like China, which wants “assymetric trade, not free trade”, and which is “stealing” America’s technology and intellectual property.
Anderson highlights Brazil as a “world class story,” and included Australia, Indonesia, and Canada, not China and Russia, as “countries that are going to do the best” in the near- and medium-term futures.
“But we’ve got to stop the ‘free trade delusion’ that both the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton suffered from,” he said.
Moving closer to home, Anderson, who lives on San Juan, praised the bandwidth-growth initiative nurtured by OPALCO, the EDC and tech-savvy locals.
“It will propel growth,” he said.
