Softlanding an Economy
SOFTLANDING Ganga Prasad Rao http//myprofile.cos.com/gangar How often have we heard of 'softlanding' the economy? Of course, we all know what it means – to bring the economy to a sustainable rate of expansion by increasing the interest rate after a period of loose monetary policy. The risk, as perceived by policy makers, is that too much and/or too fast a rise in interest rate could crash the economy in to a recession. Indeed, Keynesian economists have made a profession of macro-economic intervention to raise growth and then seek to softland it when the economy grows unsustainably. But that's not my point. My argument concerns the nation's economy as a whole. Every emerging economy wishes to grow and grow fast. Yet, perennial growth at more than a couple percent points is 'demanding' in every sense of the word. Do we put our industry on a growth path that exhausts natural resources, inflates prices and exacerbates a million social and environmental externalities...