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 First-year teacher Bethany McGaughy reads to her students Wednesday at Cridersville Elementary School. Staff photo/JenniferTangeman By JENNIFER TANGEMAN
Staff Writer
CRIDERSVILLE — Students at Cridersville Elementary School building agree on one thing they like about their new school — it’s big.
“It’s nice, it’s clean, and it’s big,” a fourth-grader studying in Deb Eley’s classroom said.
Students seemed to find a common thread to every facet of the new building, even the bathrooms.
“I like the new bathrooms— those things are huge,” Zac Winget said.
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The 3 Rs: CSU economist discusses recession, resources, recovery |
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Thursday, 17 December 2009 |
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 Dr. Edward “Ned” Hill, an economist and dean with the Cleveland State University stresses a point regarding the U.S. economy’s recovery and how businesses can prepare for the challenges of the future of business. Staff photo/William Laney By WILLIAM LANEY
Managing Editor
A business owner or a manager working to help his business survive a recession today is now the same strategy they should use during a period of growth, a Cleveland State University economist says.
Dr. Edward “Ned” Hill discussed the three “Rs” — recession, resources and recovery — as the guest speaker at the Wapakoneta Area Economic Development Council’s annual banquet held Thursday at The Grand Plaza.
“The major point I would like to get across to business people in Wapakoneta is actually a little off topic from my speech as a whole — during recession or growth you still have to maintain control over your own business,” Hill told the Wapakoneta Daily News after a luncheon for more than 110 people. “You have to figure out how to have continuous innovation, you have to figure out how to make certain you have a very flexible work place and also how you are going to use your supply chain to create value.”
Cleveland State University College of Urban Affairs dean said he understands these keys may sound like a bunch of buzzwords and easy to do, but actually making them work is hard to do.
“The second big message is yes the recession is indeed over, but the recovery does not mean we are recovered and we are in for a long, slow recovery,” Hill said, noting the economic numbers indicate the recession likely ended in July. “The politics around this is going to be as ugly as can be.”
Hill pleaded that Ohioans have to keep their legislators at the Statehouse and on Capitol Hill focused on economic fundamentals. At present, that includes another stimulus package as employment lags the recovery at a “dangerous rate.”
“We have to keep the stimulus going because the recovery is so thready,” Hill told those gathered for the first event at The Grand Plaza. “We have a 30 percent chance of falling back into a double-dip recession that will look like 1982 all over again and we are not out of this one (recession) yet. After we avoid the second dip, we have to do a policy 180 and that policy 180 is to we have to increase taxes at the national level because we have to deal with the deficit.
“It also means that any presidential candidate from any party that comes here two years from now and talking about how we don’t have to raise taxes — they are lying,” he said. “We cannot leave this mess to our kids and grandkids. It really means we have to have sensible economic policy.”
As the economy recovers, he said the manufacturing landscape in Ohio will change with “different parts of the state doing it at different amounts of speed. It will be slowest in Appalachia, and in the western part of the state a lot of it will be based on companies coming in.”
Moving forward Ohio will continue to be a manufacturing state, with approximately 17 percent of the state’s gross domestic product (GDP)a result of manufacturing, the professor claimed. The manufacturing vein in Ohio will continue to be Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton, which are along Interstate 70.
“It is really all about economic fundamentals — quality of your people, quality of the infrastructure and making certain that you have quality of life that is globally competitive to make sure that you get looked at,” Hill said. “The other thing is communities such as what we hear about Wapakoneta today is your ability to really be diverse in what you do — you don’t get foreign investment if you are in an intolerant place.”
He credited the late Gov. James A. Rhodes with making Honda executives and their workers feel comfortable locating a business and employees in Ohio, specifically Marysville and Anna.
For the average worker, Hill, who earned his doctorates in economics and urban and regional planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said they need to be patient for at least the next year.
Citing statistics, Hill pointed out he recession of 1990 lasted nine months and took 32 months for employment to recovery, the nine-month recession of 2001 took two years to before a jobs recovery. This current recession has lasted 24 months, so it is likely a jobs recovery will take much longer.
He figures employment numbers should start to increase slightly in 2010 but employment levels may not improve until 2013 because it typically lags an economic recovery by three years.
“They (workers) need to understand the economic signals are going to be mixed for the next several months, some will be up and some will be down, but they have to take a longer view on this stuff,” Hill said. “The other thing is that on economic policy they need to be intolerant of the extremists on both sides — we need a radical middle.”
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Last Updated ( Friday, 18 December 2009 )
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