begin quote from:
These 1 percenters think America is broken, too
Yahoo Finance | - |
Such Trumpian rhetoric is surprisingly commonplace at this year's gathering of top business, finance
and political leaders, perhaps because the presidential campaigns of
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders have generated
glaring ...
SeeThese 1 percenters think America is broken, too
“I believe very much in free enterprise, but modern American capitalism is not working for the majority of Americans,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia said at the conference. “The country needs a big win.”
Such Trumpian rhetoric is surprisingly commonplace at this year’s gathering of top business, finance and political leaders, perhaps because the presidential campaigns of Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders have generated glaring bipartisan evidence of how angry millions of Americans are. That may not show up in Wall Street bonuses or hedge-fund profits, but the world’s money mavens seem to be getting the message all the same.
It’s
not just America, either. Britons will soon vote on whether to leave
the European Union, a rebellious move that would assert national pride
over an economic pact that on the whole benefits the U.K. Nationalist
parties are rising in France, Germany and Spain. “We’re seeing the
growth of these anti-establishment movements, and even if they don’t
govern, they can paralyze the traditional parties from governing,”
Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor for investing firm Allianz,
said at the conference. “If you run these capitalist economies at a low
speed for a long time, things start to break economically, financially
and politically.”
The U.S. economy is doing better than most, with
strong employment gains, low inflation and low interest rates. But the
growth rate is only about 2% -- barely half the rate of the 1990s and
1980s. Business investing is weak, showing poor corporate confidence in
the future. That in turn slows overall growth, since more business
spending would create more jobs and give people more money to spend.Washington, D.C. could help, with shrewd, aggressive policies, but it may be doing the opposite and holding the economy back. “We have a crisis,” Republican Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, a former Fortune 500 CEO, said at the conference. “The frustration of people back home is very simple. Today a lot of people are motivated by frustrations with Washington’s lack of results.” He, Warner and other politicians at the Milken conference say Washington politicians understand the problem, but are prevented from finding solutions by a handful of obstructionists and leadership that doesn’t seem interested in problem-solving.
Business
could do more, too. “I get a little tired with the business community
bitching about Washington but then never wanting to get their hands
dirty,” Warner groused. “If you don’t engage, you turn the keys over to
the extremists. That’s not going to fix it.”
There’s also plenty
of discussion of solutions, such as bipartisan agreements to streamline
taxes and regulations, better support for those who lose jobs to foreign
workers, a longer-term corproate focus on building strong comapnies,
and more corporate investment in local communities. But after all the
talk and good intentions, many Milken attendees will leave Beverly Hills
and go back to looking out for themselves. That may be another thing
wrong with the country.Rick Newman’s latest book is Liberty for All: A Manifesto for Reclaiming Financial and Political Freedom. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.
No comments:
Post a Comment