Happy days are here again, says the old song, and given the current economic numbers, one can scarcely argue. Productivity is up; unemployment is down; inflation is practically nonexistent; the budget deficit is shrinking fast.

Notes from Detroit...Overall, Gear Expo 97, the AGMA biennial trade show, was a success. While attendance may not have been what some people had hoped for, the quality of the attendees was high. Serious buyers came and brought their checkbooks.

I sat down to write this editorial about my father, Harold Goldstein, as he approached his 80th birthday in October. I had meant it to be a celebration of his nearly 65 years in the machine tool business. Unfortunately, on August 26, as I was working on it, my father passed away after a long battle with emphysema. This editorial has now become a memorial as well as a celebration.

Economic times are good right now in America and in the gear industry. We're in the seventh year of an up cycle. The tough shake-outs of the 1980s and early 90s are over. Orders are up. Backlogs are at comfortable levels. We're looking at what promises to be the biggest, most successful trade show in the industry's history coming up in Detroit in October. The most pressing question on the immediate horizon seems to be "How long can the good times go on?"

What is a quality product? This is not an idle question. In the Darwinian business world in which we operate, knowing the answer to this question is key to our survival. A whole library of standards and benchmarks is available to help us gage how we're doing, but they don't really tell the whole story.

Recently I had the pleasure of having dinner with Frank Sinatra, Jr. He was here in Chicago for a benefit concert for Roosevelt University (my wife is co-chairperson of the benefit). Our conversation ranged over a wide variety of subjects, including a small gem of an HBO television movie, "Truman" with Gary Sinise in the title role.

Long-time readers of these pages will know that I have always felt strongly about the subject of professional education. There's nothing more important for an individual's career development than keeping up with current technology. likewise, there's nothing more important that a company can do for itself and it employees than seeing to it they have the professional education they need. Giving people the educational tools they need to do their jobs is a necessary ingredient for success.

In July of 1996 we introduced the gear community to the Internet in these pages through the Gear Industry Home Page (GIHP). This electronic buyers guide for gear machine tools, tooling, accessories and services has proven to be more popular than we could have envisioned. In our first month, we had over 3,000 hits, and in our third month, we have over 4,500. By our fourth month, we topped the 7,000 mark, and we are on our way to 11,000 hits in November. As our advertisers develop their own home sites in order to offer layers of information about their companies, their products and services, we expect this activity will increase even more.

Just back from IMTS and once again, I'm struck by the enormous vitality and strength of the manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy. It has made a phoenix-like rise from the grave dug for it by pundits in the '80s and has come back more robust and competitive than ever.

A good many things bother me about election years - the annoying sound bites, the negative commercials, the endless political over-analysis. But what bothers me most about the coming election is this: So far (when I'm writing this, it's admittedly early in the campaign) there's little or no talk about what is one of the most critical national issues of the next thirty years - our growing government debt.