Its great to see President-elect Obama aggressively taking on the economy prior to his taking office. Unfortunately, the economic advisory team that he has put together looks more like a semester's worth of great guest speakers for an MBA class than an economic advisory team that can truly help him.
There are a lot of great minds on the list:
Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Laura Tyson, who served as Clinton's top economic adviser; former Fed Vice Chairman Roger Ferguson; Time Warner Inc. Chairman Richard Parsons; former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman William Donaldson and Xerox Corp. Chief Executive Officer Anne Mulcahy.
Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and Roel Campos, an ex-SEC commissioner, and Warren Buffett are also on the advisory board.
Notice anything missing?
Not a single entrepreneur. Yes Warren Buffett started a business, but he will be the first to tell you that he "doesn't do start ups". Which means there isn't a single person advising PE Obama that we know of that knows what it's like to start and run a business in this or any economic climate. That's a huge problem.
If we are going to solve our current economic problems, our president needs to get first hand information on the impact his proposed policies will have on real Joe the Plumbers. People who are 1-person companies living job to job, hoping they get paid on time. We need to know what the impact of his policies will be on the individually owned Chrysler Dealership in Iowa. The bodega in Manhattan. The mobile phone software startup out of Carnegie Mellon. The event planner in Dallas. The barbershop in L.A. The restaurant in Boston.
Entrepreneurs that start and run small businesses will be the propellant in this economy. PE Obama needs to have the counsel of those who will take the real risk inherent in creating companies and jobs. Those who put their money and lives on the line with their business.
Without it, the rules of unintended consequences of any economic policy could hit you in the mouth in ways you never expected. Things like forcing companies from being taxpayers to the underground cash economy, or forcing new hires to be independent contractors to avoid having to pay their insurance or higher matching social security amounts. Your current group has no one with 100% of their net worth on the line. I promise you that the possibility of losing it all will provide a completely different perspective than any of the "knowledge" the esteemed, learned members of his current advisory team offer.
PE Obama, I'm always available to help, but my recommendation would be to randomly go through the new incorporation filings and ask for volunteers to give feedback. Ask the people who are actually starting new businesses what they need.
Entrepreneurs will lead us out of this mess. Talk to them.
So much for change......
protectionism is regressive. go back to econ 101...
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/sec-accuses-mark-cuban-of-insider-trading/
most of us have cars. most of us do not need another car. most of us can do without another car until a fuel efficient is available.
why help the big 3? buying these SUVs, etc. is not helping us advance, just sending us down the road of more of the same.
there are no fixes here. only starting from scratch. and that is a painful, painful lesson.
"Entrepreneurs got us into this mess" is a load of crap.
It is a type of enemy to the entrepreneur that got us into this mess: bureaucrats.
The unimaginative placeholders within huge companies and government. People who never truely create value, only hide within organizations trying to "look busy."
People who start businesses, from one-person operations on up, care a LOT more about doing the Right Thing than all the paper-pushers and CYOAers in the world.
A lot of posters are displaying an ignorant knee-jerk reaction to Mr Cuban's praise of enrepreneurs.
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No, we're displaying an informed reaction to Mr. Cuban's knee-jerk favoritism to the special interest group in which he defines his own identity. Also, the dot-com boom and bust provide plenty of examples of "unimaginative placeholders ... who never truely create value" falling into the group "entrepreneurs" not by virtue of any marketable idea, and no talent except baffling over-funded venture capitalists with the current high-tech fad keywords.
and you would be forced to spew your subjectively objective realism on the neighbors and your family.
think about it.
When government gets involved in any aspect of our lives, this is when we really get screwed. And what does PE O intend to do, INCREASE government intervention.
Please before you embarrass yourself anymore, take a few beginning business classes.
Knowing Obama's intellectual steadiness and his demonstrated common sense, I am am sure he has the entrepreneurs represented at the lower level. Did you do your research to find out if this is true or happy to create an attention-grabbing headline?
Yes, the scope here is global, not local. So we need people who have global perspective to things, who will be more likely academics. Entrepreneurial types see things more from their narrow perspective - as they should. But they don't qualify for the jobs that O is filling.
I am an entrepreneur running a small business. He has already spoken for us quite extensively in his campaigns - especially in the context of taxes. The rest, we should be able to heck on our own; that's why we call ourselves entrepreneurs.
We are the ones who leave the security of the corporate world and seek less secure adventure in the wild. If we don't have the stomach for it, we need to get back to the corporate world and be happy to work for someone else. We should be looking for a basic support from the government and a fair representation to a level but not looking for a handout.
Actually we have too many schools teaching economics and business. Economics is so simple that economists have to complicate the issue in order to justify their own existence. Either you operate in the black or in the red. If you are in the red you are in the process of going bankrupt. Even the US can only lose so much and we have been losing ever since we made those stupid decisions to stop producing goods. We are already out of money and we are almost out of credit. The only true growth in economy is taking a raw material and creating a product, everything else is just swapping dollars. I hope it is not too late but I am afraid it really is too late. GM didn't start going bankrupt this year. They started back in the 80's when they chose to place blame, make heads roll, and CYA instead of solving the problems. That is basically what we are doing as a country.
here's another way of saying it:
The study of "money," above all other fields, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Part of electing a new president is trusting his judgement while giving him opportunity to shape his vision. There will be critics underfoot no matter where he steps, but give Obama a chance to form his team before you start tearing it down.
And yes, I include the Clinton administration as well. The seeds of this meltdown didn't just fall out of Dubya's pocket, and he certainly didn't prepare the field.
Glass-Steagall was trashed in 2000, designed by Phil Gramm, supported by Rubin and Summers, and signed by Bubba.
And don't forget good old Greenspan.
Wall Street money-pushers are NOT the kind of entrepreneurs Cuban is referencing.
It was the greedy and unwise entrepreneur who got us into this mess to begin with. Look at GM, for example. Do you remember how GM killed the electric car? It is the entrepreneur who in killed the future of the company by playing hooky with the oil corporations. They want us to pay the price now for their lack of foresight?
We need a completely new approach to the way we do business in this country and in the world. The change we will come from architects with a revolutionary vision, not from entrepreneurs associated with the old ways of an economy that is about to collapse. Once we put together a new plan, then the entrepreneur will take advantage of it and put it to work. Obama is, again, on the right track.