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Volcker, Romer and Summers: Silent as the dollar collapses, oil and gold surge, and growth-inhibiting policies such as higher taxes and cap-and-trade...View Enlarged Image
Gold prices near $1,100 an ounce are a prelude to what is ahead if the Obama administration and Congress do not soon restore fiscal integrity.
Investors at the margin are slowly moving to purchase gold as well as oil. Concerns about an eventual U.S. sovereign debt downgrade are starting to make the rounds. As those concerns turn into fears one may see a collapse in the value of the dollar and a rush into gold, oil, other commodities and currencies of other countries.
A doubling in gold and oil prices over the next year and a return to recession is feasible and perhaps likely if the policy portfolio of this administration doesn't undergo a radical change.
Unemployment is over 10% and may move higher. Unemployment hit 10.8% in December 1982.
Everyone knows what works to bring down unemployment — policies aimed at encouraging economic growth.
Instead of policies to encourage economic growth, the administration and Congress are pushing for large tax hikes on individual taxpayers and businesses in the packages of national health care and cap-and-trade.
There may be an additional 8% payroll tax on small businesses that do not provide health care and a tax on individuals who choose not to buy insurance. The proposed health care plans are recipes to force businesses out of business and push up the unemployment rate. There are already over 15 million people out of work.
The policy focus should be on reducing costs for businesses so they can become more competitive in this global economy and hire more workers. A lower-tax-rate environment would encourage more people to start businesses. The administration is pushing precisely the wrong policy prescription for the U.S. economy in this highly competitive global economy.
The federal deficit for the past fiscal year was $1.4 trillion, and OMB estimates the cumulative deficit at $9 trillion for the next 10 years. Everyone knows that is an understatement of the cumulative deficit with the current wrongheaded policy prescription.
Paul Volcker, an adviser to President Barack Obama, was Federal Reserve chairman in the 1980s as unemployment peaked. He knows and understands the policies needed to bring the unemployment rate down.
Silence from him.
Larry Summers was an adviser to President Bill Clinton during the 1990s, when the economy boomed. He knows that a smaller market share for federal government expenditures results in a bigger share for the private sector so the private sector can create more jobs.
To cut costs and prevent problems, consider forming cross-functional teams, says Jay Galbraith, a business coach and former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cross-functional teams are made up of workers from several business units or departments. They offer a range of ...
In 2008, three researchers decided to cost out the expense of insuring those in America lacking health insurance. The Health Affairs paper estimates the price tag at $120 billion a year. The paper is flawed. First and foremost, the cost of health care to the nation's uninsured is assumed to be the ...
Twenty years ago, late on a Thursday evening in Berlin, the cement and concertina-wire symbol of the Cold War was breached, inadvertently opened by a botched answer of a flustered East German Communist Party apparatchik. Announcing a loosening in border-crossing policy, he was peppered with ...
Election '09: Conservatives decisively won two of three bellwether races, and would have taken all three if not for a betrayal by an opportunistic liberal Republican. Historical comparison shows the significance. ...
If the insurance industry thought its early support for health care reform would earn it some points with Democrats, it recently got a rude awakening. After America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry association representing health insurers, released a study showing that premiums would rise 18% ...
Posted By: sevanclaig(205) on 11/11/2009 | 12:43 AM ET
the next election is still too far away to step in and be "the gov'mint saved-yer" again for the 72IQ Jerry Springer show libs that voted these inept, adolescents in. Of course there are people in the admin who know how to fix the crisis- they were complicit in creating it.
Posted By: DanRSmith(25) on 11/11/2009 | 12:33 AM ET
No, you are not wrong. THe people in charge are like gangsters extorting "protection" against depredations of their own making. They are idealogues and so turn a deaf ear to economic common sense. And why not, they are parasitic elitists who have drawn their bloated salaries from the taxpayers and have no experience whatever in nurturing any profitable enterprise of their own.
Posted By: Optimus Maximus(35) on 11/11/2009 | 12:05 AM ET
Yes! I keep telling myself, "We know what it takes to grow the economy. It's not rocket science for Pete's sake. Lower taxes, reduce government spending, cut regulations, and get out of the private sector's way." So why are our administration and congress's policies going in the exact opposite direction? The only answer I can come up with is that they want additional crises so they can implement more socialist policies at a faster rate in the name of a national emergency. Am I wrong?
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