Mark Muro

With Washington gridlocked and retrenching, the new state banking models offer a hopeful counterpoint to national dysfunction.

[The Ohio River Valley has] rejected the narrative of decline and the theory that we would be just fine if we designed our goods here, but produced them offshore. What’s turning out to be the case is that production can occur here. Our strongest industrial sectors are still based in that very region of the country.

Judged by the standards of short-term job creation, the [federal government’s] energy investments may not have performed brilliantly. However, over the medium and longer term, these programs will in time be viewed as critical investments in research and development, early-stage deployment and broader scale-up of important new technologies.

Governments of the U.S., Europe, and China have all spent hundreds of billions of dollars on clean-energy research and deployment. The price of solar and wind power have fallen precipitously.