How Steve Forbes Will Save Us
When I look at a downtown devastated by empty storefronts and For Sale signs, I see lost jobs, reduced property taxes, and deteriorating infrastructure. Steve Forbes sees the churning forces of the Free Market at work.
If the U.S. government creates a permanent, voluntary public employment program that offers a living-wage job to anyone willing and able to work in a public service project, unemployment will be addressed directly.
When I look at a downtown devastated by empty storefronts and For Sale signs, I see lost jobs, reduced property taxes, and deteriorating infrastructure. Steve Forbes sees the churning forces of the Free Market at work.
We should give strong consideration to nationalizing the largest banks in order to run them like public utilities. We also should consider placing banking employees into the civil service system to end the ridiculous wage distortions.
Recently, "Dr. Doom" warned about a coming market correction. Should investors rely on Professor Roubini's crystal ball?
Government must manage the federal budget in the same way that you manage your household budget. But in truth, the president must do the opposite.
Obama is right to note that he must "get the economy as a whole moving to be able to help anybody," but that effort should not be mutually exclusive from assisting those communities disproportionately impacted.
The Frank and Dodd regulatory reform bills are terribly drafted provisions which will strike a death blow to "main street" lenders and hand over a multi-trillion dollar mortgage market to a few large financial institutions.
Operating a business on Main Street is a lot different than lecturing at the Harvard Economic Club. The team Obama surrounded himself with has spent way more time in a faculty lounge than in the corner barber shop.
I'm tempted to say that the US is plainly unable to cope with the economic crisis in a serious way. So long as economic thinking is mired in a world that disappeared with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, we're stuck.
Given the misdeeds of the banking industry, the financial services sector could make huge improvements simply by focusing on serving the ill-served with better, faster and cheaper products.
Since the likelihood of more federal stimulus packages is low -- unless they're called something like a "jobs bill" -- this will mean more pain and an even slower economy.
I am thankful that Wall Street is still a festering sump pump of illogic, hubris and greed, and will continue to provide me with plenty to write about for the foreseeable future.
We have much to learn from Beijing. The Chinese Communist Party wisely crafted a stimulus plan that called for up to 75% of spending be financed by banks and state-owned enterprises -- not the central government.