From Charles Krauthammer via NRO’s The Corner:
Every question [administration spokesmen] get on the economy, their answer is “Bush drove us into a ditch.” I think they ought to wear it on a t-shirt, and in that way they could have an interview and not have to say anything. They could have a sandwich while being interviewed.
It’s no answer. It’s also no answer to say that big business is cynical and unprincipled. That’s not news. But what is news is an administration that is adding not just costs but uncertainty.
There are three major areas a corporation, small or large, has to worry about: health-care costs, energy costs, and the cost of money. In each of these, the administration either has or is planning regulations worth thousands of pages which are going to raise costs, as we know, but also are going to interact in ways that nobody understands and that are going to create uncertainty…
Some things are certain – higher taxes in 2011 as the Bush tax cuts expire, so businesses are front-loading economic activity in to 2010. Cash for clunkers and new home tax credits also encouraged early economic activity. Trouble is, all that is stolen from future action – which means that we’ll have even less economic activity in late 2010 and early 2011 than we would have expected.
But the uncertainty is probably the worst economy-killer we’ve got. No one can say, from day to day, just what is coming down the pike. As Speaker Pelosi said, we had to wait until ObamaCare was passed to find out what is in it – and the more we learn, the more costly it becomes. Meanwhile, minimum wages are still being hiked, taxes are going up (States are raising taxes in desperate, foolish attempts to close budget gaps) and while Cap and Trade, Card Check and other liberal idiocies are still on deck, there’s just no way anyone is going to invest heavily in long term projects. Better to just hunker down, save what you can and see what comes up.
If someone planned to make the downturn of 2008-09 in to a Great Depression, he couldn’t have scripted it better than to say, raise taxes, increase regulation, increase government debt and don’t tell people what you’re really going to do. Its the perfect storm for complete economic collapse, and everyone who is in business knows it. So, people freeze in place, and no one is going to do anything until at least the middle of 2011 – and by then it may be too late to avert a Great Depression.
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