Emerging Markets Of The United States

For my Rust Belt Reset file:

Meredith Whitney, the CEO of Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, said the rise of other powers will provide the U.S. economy the spark it needs to reinvent itself. They will need an outside source of food to feed growing populations, she said.

"The U.S. has the opportunity to become the equivalent of the Saudi Arabia of food," said Whitney, an analyst who rose to prominence in 2007 by making what turned out to be a presciently bearish call on Citigroup shares.

Banks in recent decades had concentrated their growth on the East Coast and West Coast, overly exposing themselves to the collapse of the housing market in those areas, she said in our roundtable discussion. Banks that serve, say, the Midwest could have a leg up. "The growth will be in what I characterize as the emerging markets of the United States, which is the Rust Belt, the Green Belt, if you will."

This is the kind of future-casting that gets at the end of Richard Florida's Creative Class geography. The world looks a bit more flat and prosperity springs up in ironic places (e.g. Pittsburgh). There's No Place Like Indianapolis.