U.S. Economy "Close to a Destructive Tipping Point

[katty]

more:
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/u.s.-economy-%22close-to-a-destructive-tipping-point%22-glenn-hubbard-says-535457.html


U.S. Economy "Close to a Destructive Tipping Point," Glenn Hubbard Says
Posted Sep 28, 2010 07:30am EDT by Aaron Task in Newsmakers, Recession


EmailPrint."America is very close to a destructive tipping point," co-authors Glenn Hubbard and Peter Navarro warn in their new book Seeds of Destruction. "We must change how we conduct our politics and economics...or we will inevitably go the way of all once-great nations and suffer an irreversible decline."
Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School, joined Dan Gross and I to discuss the "major structural imbalances" facing America, chief among them being the government's profligate spending.

Hubbard, you may recall, was chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers during George W. Bush's first term. As you might expect, he is a strong advocate of smaller government and lower taxes. But Hubbard and Navarro, a business professor at UC Irvine, are also harshly critical of Bush's "gross mismanagement" of the fiscal stimulus bequeathed to his administration by President Clinton. Specifically, Hubbard chastises his former boss for the creation of a new unfunded federal mandate, Medicare Part D.

[zipplewrath]

1. We would be in so much of a better place

I just don't understand how it is lost on the American people that Bush came into office with a friggin' surplus and ran up an unimaginable debt. It's not that I don't think that Gore would have engaged in some deficit spending, especially after 9/11. But holy bajeezus, between the tax cuts and the Medicare Part D, they ran it through the friggin' roof. And that doesn't even include the unfunded wars.

[Loge23]

2. With all due respect to Messrs. Hubbard & Navarro:

"America is very close to a destructive tipping point," co-authors Glenn Hubbard and Peter Navarro warn in their new book Seeds of Destruction. "We must change how we conduct our politics and economics...or we will inevitably go the way of all once-great nations and suffer an irreversible decline."

That horse has already left the barn.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Translation:

If we keep wasting money on human needs, there won't be as much left for the rich to steal.

It's not how much you spend, as what you spend it on. If we quit supporting a grossly overblown military in order to keep the oil flowing, and if we instead took that money and invested it in new technologies and green infrastructure, there would be plenty left over for health care, retirements, and other human-scale purposes. If we had taken the TARP money and fed it into the bottom of the system instead of into the top, it would have been far more efficient at lifting us out of the current economic crisis. The big-buck infusion into the top temporarily averted some crises, and we would no doubt have been much worse off if we had done nothing, but what we actually did with the bailouts was primarily to feed the wolf pack to distract them from pulling down the last few buffalo.

[bemildred]

4. Right wing tools. nt