Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Regime Uncertainty Update: Enough

Articles: An Economics Lesson Even a Liberal Can Grasp: "Let me give you one example to illustrate this point: in the course of my lecture business I meet a great many owners of small- and medium-sized companies -- precisely the men and women we depend upon to create jobs for all the rest of us.  One evening, when my lecture to a group of these entrepreneurs had ended and we were all having a drink in the hotel bar, the CEO of a rock-solid manufacturing company said something that stopped the conversation cold: "I'll be damned before I start hiring people now, just in time to send the unemployment rate plunging so it re-elects the president next year.  In a second term, this guy'll kill my business."  There was a dead silence, and then every other business owner at the table nodded in agreement.

The point isn't whether these CEOs are right or wrong.  The point is that this is what they've come to believe, and their actions will be based upon their perceptions.  For all of us who depend on our country's entrepreneurs to create jobs -- which is to say, for all of us without safe government jobs -- this is more than depressing.  It's terrifying."
Any questions?