This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor.

The Great Stagnation, that's the theme, and I welcome John Cochran of the Hoover Institution,

writing the grumpy economist, I highly recommend, because what

we're looking at here is something that is immediately upon us and can be dealt with if you

understand how we got in this problem of not growing, of not creating the conditions for more

and more prosperity, the great stagnation.

Professor, a very good evening to you.

1970, a dear date to me because I graduated college.

Did I know that I was graduating at the end of innovation and growth?

What happened, John?

Why did we suddenly pull back after the successes of innovation and growth. What happened, John? Why did we suddenly pull back after the

successes of the early part of the 20th century, especially following the war? Yeah, the U.S.

economy grew like gangbusters, very innovative through the early 1970s. Then there was the great

slowdown, malaise and all that.

Picked up a little bit in the 80s and 90s, but nothing like it had been. And then around

2000, our growth really slowed down. We had been 4% a year. Now good growth is 2% a year.

And of course, the U.S. is doing better than anywhere else. Europe basically stopped growing

at all about 10 years ago.

So we could be doing a lot better that there is in the news. Oh, yeah, GDP is up. But we're still in the 2%

range. We should be in the 4% range. And we should have done it for 25 years, making us much

richer than we are. Did we know in 1970? Did the leadership know that they'd hit a wall?

They certainly did. I mean, no, the nature of the wall is contentious today, but it was clear

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