Greenspan Urges Businessmen to Be Bold

[Dover]

By Tim Ahmann
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. businesses are unusually reluctant to spend and hire, but the economy could benefit next year if their caution ebbs, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress on Wednesday.

In a second day of testimony on the central bank's semiannual monetary policy report, Greenspan told the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee that even with the recovery gaining pace, Corporate America has held back from new capital investments, inventory building and permanent hires.

"We are far from behaving the way we typically did" in other expansions, the Fed chief said in answering questions before the panel. He pinned the corporate restraint on a number of "caution-creating factors."

"To the extent these are capable of being assuaged, what it probably will be doing is rather than creating a large surge in economic activity, is to gradually stretch it out, if indeed a degree of confidence gradually returns," Greenspan said. "That would be one the reasons why a gradual expansion which we now seem to be experiencing does bode well for next year."

...cont'd >

http://tinyurl.com/6g9fz

[jpgray]

1. Lower the costs of businessmen, they will pocket the profits

They won't hire in America (read: raise costs) unless they have to. Greenspan is either stupid or counting on everyone else being stupid. You don't become a successful businessman by responding to generosity with generosity--you respond to it by trying to lower costs even further. Nothing wrong with that, but let's not pretend that corporations always will give back when they take. When the average CEO salary compared to the average worker's jumped 10,000% in twenty years, there's some evidence that corporations having more funds to throw around doesn't result in their giving back to their community. Unless you believe that the great travesty was how underpaid the CEOs were, or conversely how overpaid the workers were.

[54anickel]

20. Not an either/or proposition....

Greenspan IS stupid AND counting on everyone else being stupid. :evilgrin:

[fearnobush]

2. Well, with DOW - 102.94 NASDAQ - 40.28 I guess their not listening to

old lizard boy.

[Tempest]

13. And the market goes AHHHHHH!

Market down 37 points before Greenspan spoke to finish 102 points down for the day.

Yup, Greenspan sure instills confidence these days.

[htuttle]

3. He's never had a real job, has he?

Didn't he come right out of academia to the Fed?

First, he tells people to get ARMs right before he raises the interest rates, now he wants businesses to go on a spending spree when nobody has any money.

He seems to have George W Bush's business acumen, actually...

[Mountainman]

4. Maybe the business men and women don't want to risk their money on

Chimpy's word.

If there was a real recovery then the business community would invest. I suspect that most of the trade journals are cautioning their subscribers to wait and see if there is a real recovery or not.

I have read a couple of trade journals that do not see a rosy economic future ahead.

Hey Greenspan, we know a real recovery when we see one. Telling everyone there is a good economy doesn't make it so. Only if people act in such a way to bring about a good economy will there be one. You can't talk people into risking their cash just to help Bush get elected.

[louis-t]

5. First, they tell America...

go, spend, spend, spend that lousy $300 we gave you, now it's spend, spend, spend and 'EXPAND YOUR BUSINESS AND GROW THE ECONOMY'. Add the U.N. and NATO to that and Repubs have been doing some serious begging lately.

[AndyTiedye]

6. They Just Haven't Got Enough of that "Irrational Exuberance"

everyone is just Bushed.

[The_Casual_Observer]

7. Greenspan is better than a cliche Greenspan

Somebody writes those oblique incoherent monologues and he reads them word for word in a shrill slow monotone, as if it is the word of god.

Greenspan is simply another fraud. His only "weapon" is interest rates, which, having been kept at ridiculously low levels have fueled enormous inflation in housing and education costs and virtually eliminated any rate of return on legitimate saving accounts.

[hatrack]

8. "Be bold - beat the rush - outsource NOW!!!"

Whatever, Unca Alan.

[Cocoa]

9. I hope he didn't pull an Arnold

please tell me he didn't tell them not to be girlie-men.

[MaineDem]

10. Damn, I'm not a businessMAN

And I was so looking forward to being bold.

I couldn't open the link, however.

[kodi]

11. 1st rule of business. use someone else's money

.

[Bonhomme Richard]

12. He's begging them to increase hiring and..................

increase pay. What kind of fucking financial guidence is that? He's got a snowballs chance in hell that these CEO's will part with one single fucking dime. LOL, he acts as if they have a soul or something. God this pisses me off.
Shit, he says this is a different kind of recovery. No shit Sherlock, the difference is that it's a recovery for the rich only and in name because the media repeats the shit. Piss me off bigtime.
I'm gonna go have a smoke. Shit!

[cthrumatrix]

14. add the fact the AWOL "lies" about growing jobs...flipping burgers

and other service jobs...but that won't get us out of this rut.

[kysrsoze]

16. The signal to the markets: "Trouble ahead"

When you have to beg corporations to hire people, something is SERIOUSLY wrong. If we could only go back to the good old days where people concentrated on annual earnings and long-term success, rather than quarter market-making.

Greenspan's right though, but not telling it like it is - if they don't start hiring people, the market itself will no longer be there to buy their products and services. Of course, then they can all blame it on the poorly performing economy rather than their own freakin' selfishness.

[Neshanic]

15. Hire my little monkeys! Fly away and hire. You and the little dog too.

[lil-petunia]

17. oh shit

the economy must be ready to tank.

If the Fed chair is telling people to go take risks that their own best instincts tell them not to, we are in deep doodoo land economically.

[UpInArms]

18. ROFLMAO!

Meanspin is attempting to beg his way to the fairy tale ending for "tinkle on me" economics.

If I didn't laugh, I would cry.

This is the most pathetic bunch of non-thinkers on the planet.

November cannot come soon enough and January 21 seems lightyears away.

Will there be anything left?

:sigh:

[Merlin]

19. Hire! Spend! Look into my eyes! You're growing very bullish!

Give it up Allen. Even your wife knows your rhetoric is just cliche.

[Ms. Clio]

21. "We are far from behaving the way we typically did" in other expansions"

Maybe that's because there really hasn't been an "expansion" at all, except in CEO take home pay?

Maybe we have to call the "expansion" something else?

[Fovea]

22. Greenspan has been out of bullets since 2002.

Why does he keep acting like the new sheriff in town?