Economic Growth

The nation's manufacturers, restless that weak demand is restricting production and profits, declared yesterday that the United States is capable of much greater economic growth -- without a sharp increase in inflation -- than the Clinton administration, the Federal Reserve and Wall Street believe is possible.The manufacturers' declaration, in a resolution adopted unanimously by more than 100 directors of the National Association of Manufacturers, is their bluntest, strongest statement on the issue.

AS FEDERAL RESERVE chairman for more than 15 years, Alan Greenspan has proved himself a master of the obtuse utterance -- what he once described as the art of incoherent mumbling. In the course of attempting to guide the nation's economy alongside four presidents and through boom and bust, Mr. Greenspan also has been, by turns, an inflation-fighter, deficit hawk and, most recently, tax-cut booster. Given that political agility -- and suspicions that he's sympathetic to the Republican tax-cut agenda -- his clear-cut challenge this week to the economic theory undergirding President Bush's latest budget and tax proposals was striking.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's plan to combat global warming is fine as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far enough. His proposal is rooted in the principle that "economic growth is key to environmental progress, because it is growth that provides the resources for investment in clean technologies." There is some truth to that, provided the economic growth is environmentally sustainable. Clean technologies alone cannot save an environment that is deliberately and rampantly polluted. Mr. Bush never spells out the economic growth he envisions, and with good reason.

Home-grown businesses: Plano, Texas; Orlando, Fla.; Tucson, Ariz.; Naperville, Ill.; and Chesapeake, Va., are the best places in the country for starting a company out of your home, according to Home Office Computing magazine. The magazine cited those locales because of their population and economic growth, demographics, infrastructure, zoning flexibility and other attributes.Happy part-timers: Many managers who work part time say they're happier and more productive than when they worked full-time hours, even though their job duties may not have been reduced.

Washington. -- The bidding for tax cuts in the 102nd Congress has started. Senator Bentsen, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has opened with a $72 billion tax-cut plan. Senator ++ Gramm has gone $18 billion higher. Before the rest of us join the auction, we should reflect on whether the country can afford for anyone to win.The facts are:* The proposals are schizophrenic. Incentives to boost consumption with a tax cut conflict with proposals to boost saving by expanding Individual Retirement Accounts and cutting taxes on capital gains.

Speaking at Howard County's annual Business Outlook program yesterday, local economists said the county's economy is rosy and the nation's economy just keeps growing, but the state's economy is thorny.The program drew about 200 business leaders to an auditorium at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, just south of Columbia."We're in something close to economic nirvana," said David W. Berson, Fannie Mae chief economist, referring to the nation as a whole.Berson, who represents Columbia's River Hill village on the Columbia Council, predicted modest economic growth nationally -- modest enough to keep inflation "fairly stable."

Just when Washington looked like it was completely preoccupied with the scandals, real and imaginary, swirling around the White House, a group of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate managed the unexpected (and, these days, extraordinary): They agreed on something. The vote Tuesday night in the Senate Judiciary Committee to forward to the floor a massive overhaul of the nation's immigration system was, to be sure, a small step and doesn't guarantee success in the full Senate, much less the House of Representatives.

BEIJING - If anti-Americanism is on the rise around the world, no one told the kids in the student visa line at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. The quest among Chinese students for visas to study in America, say U.S. Embassy officials, has become so intense that it has spawned Internet chat rooms where Chinese students swap stories about which arguments work best with which U.S. consular officials and even give them names such as "Amazon Goddess," "Too...

WASHINGTON -- At the start of a presidential election year in which the economy is a central issue, the Congressional Budget Office is predicting that the economy will begin a weak recovery by the middle of 1992 and warned lawmakers not to endanger the recovery by resorting to radical changes in economic policy before the November election.In a report to Congress, the budget office said yesterday the recession was likely to end within six months. But it offered no guidance so that President Bush and Congress would be able to withstand the mounting political pressure to stimulate the economy.

If there's a volunteer board working to promote economic development in northern Anne Arundel County, Michael Livingston probably serves on it, used to serve on it or has helped it out at one time or another. Livingston, the president and CEO of the Bank of Glen Burnie, now serves as chairman of the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp. and as chairman of the Glen Burnie Town Center Advisory Committee. Under Livingston's direction, the bank has prospered through difficult economic times.