Life in the slow lane: you'll have to walk before you can run in this recovery.

• Author: Cote, Mike
• Position: [roundtable] ECONOMIC FORECAST

Slow growth, Tough financing. Tight-fisted consumers. Double-digit unemployment. Rising interest rates.

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Welcome to your recovery. Feel better yet?

The annual UMB-sponsored Top Company trip to Napa Valley in October traditionally concludes with a breakfast session with Bill Greiner, the finance corporation's chief investment officer. On this San Francisco morning, Greiner has no shocking surprises in store. He's got a small silver lining he'll mention as a coda after his forecast, but for the most part, this is stiff upper lip stuff.

Here's what you need to know coming out of a recession that took the biggest swipe from consumer net worth in 70 years, culled from Greiner's talk.

* Expect the economy to grow 2 percent to 3.5 percent, with unemployment at 10 percent or higher.

* If you need to finance your businesses, act soon - if you can find a bank that will lend to you - since the Fed likely will be nudging interest rates upward in spring or summer.

* Don't worry about inflation for now, though it could become a threat over the next few years.

* Forget the consumer on getting us out of this one. The main driver of the economy in the months ahead: the federal government on a huge spending spree.

* The hot demographic market to target? Boomers ages 50 to 70.

* Exports will represent a bigger portion of U.S. economic power over the next few years.

* Manufacturing and capital spending will be a major economic driver.

"I've been saying I'd rather own Caterpillar Tractor than Starbucks Coffee," Greiner said, noting that manufacturing and capital spending will grow at a faster rate than the overall gross domestic product.

And of the two, Caterpillar is the more likely contender to benefit from government spending.

Discretionary spending by the government not tied to interest payments or defense spending was 1 7.4 percent in relation to the gross domestic product at the time of Greiner's talk, higher than any time in the last 50 years. "The government is out there with both guns blazing right now as far as spending money is concerned," he said.

And that's precisely what you want the government to be doing in times like these, Greiner said.

"It's one of the reasons the economy is beginning to show some signs of lift, because the government is spending a whole lot of money right now," he said. "We can all debate from a philosophical standpoint whether that's good or bad, whether they're spending money...