While I am not one to buy into the "conspiracy" theory that an earlier poster posted regarding Bob Rubin, I do in fact admit that it is "politics as usual" up on the Hill, with Congress not addressing anything but their own political careers. Once again, the American worker and consumer gets screwed by the Political End Game.
What exactly would you tell Bush to do to "fix" the economy ? Any of you people heard of the free market or the business cycle ? Also, any of you people heard what has been going on in Japan ? The Japanese Gov sure "fixed" their economy didn't they. The only thing that can be done is to keep the unemployment checks rolling out until the economy picks up, which may not be for years to come.
I don't agree. Do you know what the unemployment number really is? Extrapolate that percentage into a real number and tell me what you think it is?
I know that there are a ton of people that are out of work involuntarily and the last Unemployment figure I saw was around 5.6% for the whole country across all sectors. But don't get too hung up on those numbers, because they fluctuate all the time and then get revised later anyway. I don't want to see drastiic policies started just to make the unemployment go away in the short term to help some jokers get elected. I don't believe that anybody is smart enough to do exactly the right thing at the right time. We are in danger of winding up like Japan if the Government won't let the creative destruction happen that we all know is necessary. Lots of big companies have been poorly managed and need to fail. Lots of stocks with billion dollar market caps are worthless in fundamental terms. Japan is the perfect example, their gov thought they could engineer their way out of their mess and they only made it worse. The conservatives need to leave the social spending alone because we are in a time when we really need it. The Liberals need to leave business alone except for prosecuting the real criminals. Any drastic changes made now will backfire big time, we can look to history to show us the truth. Nixon with wage and price controls, Carter with taxes, etc. there are lots of mistakes to learn from. Let the free market do its thing but show some charity for the common man. Anything else is emotional foolishness.
You made my points exactly. There should be no political noise made by either party about this economy from those very perspectives that you addressed. There does need to be a thinning out of some of the corporate herds. There needs to be a prosecution of the illegal business practices and questionable corporate practices. Rather than legislate ourselves back to health, we need to let this one heal itself.
Restructure his economic team? Begin by getting rid of Lindsey and taking steps to usher Powell out of the FCC. Propose legislation amending the tax codes to eliminate double taxation of corporate dividends; increasing the amount that may be put in an IRA; increasing the amount that may be deducted for capital losses on sale of stocks; easing payroll taxes. Get off the tariffs. Then take on the trail lawyer lobby. Throw cares about deficits to the wind. A revitalized economy will take care of that it time. These were ideas that I heard Kudlow or Steve Forbes speak or write on at one time or another. Personally, I think he should stop talking while US markets are open. He's killing me doing that. Geo.
Propose legislation amending the tax codes to eliminate double taxation of corporate dividends; increasing the amount that may be put in an IRA; increasing the amount that may be deducted for capital losses on sale of stocks; easing payroll taxes. i agree, but why stop there? let's go for the whole hog and eliminate income tax all together. (wishful thinking i know, but nevertheless an economically sound principle) Throw cares about deficits to the wind. A revitalized economy will take care of that it time. whoa there cowboy... throw cares about it to the wind? hmm, not sure that's a great idea.... something for nothing? how long can u play that song for?...
no way. this is absolutely NOT the time to start tweaking and tuning and god forbid, doing a major overhaul of anything. God help us otherwise. Remember why they call it the free market. Its not a science project, its the world you are talking about.
Spree. Think it won't happen? Just look at discretionary spending this year. It's up by almost 14 percent, the biggest government spending spree in a generation. In fact, for the first time in over 30 years, annually appropriated programs controlled by Congress and the president have grown faster than formula-driven entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. Only a third of the entire $91 billion increase in annually appropriated funds has been spent on homeland security and national defense; the rest goes for everything from highway construction to farm subsidies. Congress has not even passed the annual budget resolution, which traditionally sets caps for the 13 spending bills, giving pork-happy lawmakers the chance to spend billions on ad hoc additions to politically popular spending programs that typically accompany an election year. Neither party seems to have the political will to force the budget back into long-term balance, making the fiscal outlook for the next decade really grim. Instead, what we see is a competition between Democrats and Republicans over who can appropriate the most in their fervid hope to win the handful of tight races for Senate and House seats that might give one or the other control over the Congress. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/021014/opinion/14edit.htm