“ So we can't go back to the bubble economy, and as you said, we really must have new engines of growth to replace the debt-fueled consumption we had in the recent past. So we believe that the most effective path to sustainable growth is an ambitious long-term public investment agenda in infrastructure.
And we learn from the Recovery Act that we have to do two things simultaneously. We have to create jobs now to make up for the collapse of the private sector investment, and we have to do so in ways that really provide the foundation for future growth, productivity, and competitiveness. ”

“ This is my administration's overriding focus. Having brought the economy back from the brink, the question is how are we going to make sure that people are getting back to work and able to support their families. It's not going to happen overnight, but we will not rest until we are succeeding in generating the jobs that this economy needs.
And I couldn't ask for a better group of people to bounce ideas off of, and we are going to be soliciting ideas from the private sector, from businesses large and small, from academia and from all political persuasions. ”

“ More money flows through private markets in a day than through all the governments in the world in a year. We can offer this incentive or that incentive, but once we put a price on carbon, all those financial markets, like a thundering herd of profit maximizers, are going to go invest in these homes, in these (inaudible) , in all these innovations. ”

“ And if we want to think about how to get people into a job training program that gives them lifelong opportunities for advancement, this is a great place to start. We can do a lot of jobs quickly, but we can actually move people on through.
And I would also say, as a person who talks a lot to ordinary people every single way, who all wonder what it means to weatherize their home and how do they know if the product is safe, I think the whole idea of having a standard is incredibly important. We need to make sure that whatever we do to weatherize and retrofit homes actually works. ”

“ But let me make one closing comment, which I think everybody will agree on, and it picks up on the point John made, that in a single day more money is circulating through the private sector than an entire year's of government spending. We are not going to be able, through government spending, replace business investment. And we are very mindful of the fact that the most important thing we can do is create an environment in which business investment is triggered and they are leading us on this path of economic growth. ”

“ It appears that the pattern that's accelerated over the last several decades is that when a recession comes, businesses don't do what they used to do back in the '50s, '60s, '70s -- lay off, and then hire back. Essentially they've learned how to keep making the same amount with fewer workers.
Significant increases in profitability, oftentimes a company increases in productivity -- but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're closing their jobs gap. ”

“ So, for example, we've got John Doerr sitting next to me, who has been one of the leading venture capitalists in the innovation economy and helped to spur on the revolution in the computer industry. John has unequal passions for the possibilities of green job growth in the future, and how, through projects like weatherization and retrofitting of buildings, we could generate millions of jobs and create huge prospects for growth over the long term. ”

“ So having things like a price for carbon, a clean energy standard -- those things are really important.
The last thing I would say is that, you know, what Rich will talk about on the manufacturing base -- having better infrastructure makes us better exporters. Fundamentally there's no reason why any job, any product that has four hours of labor, five hours of labor, that we can't do as productively in this country than any country in the world. So the right training, the right focus on workers, will allow us to be productive in that range. ”

“ I am firmly convinced that there will be 10 million new jobs created in clean energy globally between now and 2015. We see it in our own company. The Germans want it, the Chinese want it, everybody else wants it. ”

“ Now, you've done a tremendous amount with all of those things, when it comes to retrofits, smart grid, support for wind and solar energy, research in clean coal technology, and many others, and we support you very much on your efforts, and thank you for the leadership that you've shown so far. And we know that there's about $10 billion worth of urgent school repairs needed. So if public investment is sufficiently ambitious, sustained and well-targeted, we believe it will crowd in public investment by creating the preconditions for profitable real economic activity. ”

“ There's lots of important areas where we could generate new jobs that ties into manufacturing, that ties into investment, ties into research and development and education and all those things. We're now not on a path to be the worldwide leader in these businesses.
In the very near term, the way we can generate the most jobs, we believe, is through home retrofits. We have 17 percent of our construction workers who are out of work today, and there's about 200,000 home retrofits done per year in the United States. ”

“ Well, the equivalent of that for home retrofits would be "Cash for Caulkers" -- (laughter) -- and what we would do is engage private enterprise, the likes of a Lowe's or a Home Depot, these organizations that have tens of millions of people a week coming into their storefronts, and use that private capital to incentivize consumers to then work with our out-of-work trades -- remodelers, production builders -- to do this kind of work. ”

“ Jeff, we're going to start off with you. We recognize that even before the financial crisis we had an unsustainable situation in which essentially debt of all sorts we're financing an endless consumption binge on our part, but that the kinds of current account deficits, trade deficits we were developing were not ones that would serve as a model for long-term economic prosperity. ”

“ President, the production of goods and services and range of wages really must be the engine for more sustainable and equitable growth in the United States and globally, and we believe that mid-term and long-term investment and commitment in infrastructure and good green jobs is the way to get us there. ”

“ As I said, we've got experts from a wide range of business sectors, and what we're going to talk about is, are there mechanisms that we can start putting in place where we see the kind of growth that used to characterize the U.S. economy -- export-driven growth, manufacturing growth, growth that pays high wages and provides high living standards for a broad-based middle class. ”

“ Even though it's not a natural instinct to say let's create a bank to do something that the other rules of the road should establish, in this case, because the energy standards allow for escaping them if prices differentiate too much, and because the caps -- based on allowances that come into play -- are going to take a while for that pricing to work, you need to figure out a way to make alternatives cheaper. ”

“ It's also going to require that we look at new models for where future growth is going to come from, because one of the I think key understandings coming out of this past financial crisis is that a lot of our growth was debt-driven -- credit cards being maxed out, home equity loans being taken out to finance a lot of purchases. Consumers I think wisely recognized that they can't get that overextended anymore and businesses are going to be more cautious in terms of how they approach taking on a lot of debt. ”

“ So they're going to grow -- if they grow 5 percent a year for 20 years, they'll triple their electricity demand. Ours will be relatively flat because it will be less than GDP growth. And that's why you can grow an economy. So we have to do every -- we have to, therefore, work even harder to have something when we don't have fundamental demand for it.
As it relates to financing, it seems to me the stimulus program you put in place and the work that Secretary Chu and Matt Rogers and other people are doing on -- specifically on financing for energy make a lot of sense. ”

“ Green jobs. So the economy is recovering, but I think the question before us is what kind of economy do you want to recover to, what's our view short-term for jobs and longer-term a couple years out. And it's kind of ironic, if you look at Amazon, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo -- what do they have in common? All five of those companies are American companies and they're innovators and they're the world leaders in every part of this Internet technology. ”

“ I do emphasize what you said initially, that we just want a recovery that is sustainable and that takes on new directions for the economy. Manufacturing and exports have not been doing well for decades. We really have to (inaudible) green economy, give some opportunity, we know about the infrastructure. ”

“ On the technical assistance side, we have a lot of organizations throughout the country, especially led by the FDCC and the SBA, that they are not expert -- export experts. We need to put in place financial experts at the local level that can help small businesses gain the knowledge that they need, create these technical assistance programs, expert finance specialists, and really gear up our export assistance centers to help small business. This is a new area for them, and they don't have the capabilities currently. ”

“ But I'd also pause and say that while retrofitting homes and weatherization for homes is really great, we really do need to take on the issue of public buildings and commercial office buildings, as well, and we can do it at the same time in a way that gives people an opportunity not just to get low-end jobs, but actually have training and opportunities to go all the way through the scale, because the higher-end jobs will be in places like commercial office buildings and (inaudible) systems that they have to manage going on. ”

“ With the financial crisis that's just become more -- give me some sense, as a major exporter, a major manufacturer, and Fortune 500 company -- you see the environment, and what are the three, four steps that we could be taking. ”

“ I've said before, but I think it bears repeating, that we have come a long way since January, when at that time we were losing 700,000 jobs per month and across the political spectrum I think there was fear of the possibility of another Great Depression. We have pulled the economy back from the brink. We got good news last week showing that for the first time in over a year the economy was actually growing once again. And we have seen some other indicators that manufacturing is beginning to pick up. ”

“ One of the interesting things that we've been hearing as we've been talking to a lot of employers out there is tax policy a lot of times is the second or third thing that comes up in our conversations, and coordination between agencies on exports or how we're approaching the pricing of carbon or making sure that our education system is functioning effectively or getting a handle on health care costs – all those things are as important if not more important. ”

“ President, first of all, the economy -- fourth quarter sequentially is better than the third quarter, so the progress continues. I think the challenge we all have under your leadership is one that in each progressive time, business gets better at productivity. That's a good thing. But it means that output has to grow in excess of productivity in order to create jobs. So the context of with which I approach exports is a way to get output growing faster than productivity. ”

“ There are large number of companies in America whose activities and behaviors are not consistent with a sustainable kind of environment. Getting that discussed, out there appropriately, allows investors such as my company to take a look and figure out who's got the better practices. So there may be some government incentives that could get the private sector businesses to disclose more what they're doing. ”

“ President, clarifying some of our trade policies like the Doha Round, like both bilateral and unilateral trade agreements, really from the standpoint of making people understand that America is confident, that we're in business, that we're in business to sell, that we've got the kinds of technologies and products that can be very important. I would set the goal of maybe doubling exports as a percentage of GDP in some time period -- just doing that would create 3-5 million jobs, if we were able to do that. ”

“ Charles, Robert, I think, as I said, everybody agrees on the need for infrastructure. Financing is an issue. Obviously we're entering into an era of greater fiscal restraint as we move out of deep recession into a recovery. ”

“ In the '80s, there was a lot of investment in alternative technologies. When the price of oil dropped, government policies changed dramatically and it proved to be not sustainable to hold focus in. So I think there's got to be some consistency even as prices of energy go up and down. ”

“ And since our economy is already industrialized, China is not fully industrialized, they're growing 5, 6 percent demand on electricity, and it's heavily industrial-related with these greater levels of energy consumption than there is in residential. ”