That high unemployment rate is why the Federal Reserve is focusing its monetary policy at strengthening the recovery and job creation, including keeping short-term interest rates near zero and longer-term rates, such as mortgage rates, at the lowest levels in decades.
Moreover, the long-term prospective profit growth of those firms engaged in the computer and telecommunications industries has been revised up during the past five years by more than double the amount for the so-called old-economy industries. But in a meaningful sense, there is, with few BIS Review 90/2000  2  exceptions, little of a truly old economy left.