Weird's Advance Book Plug of the Week: Our former president's remedy for our fiscal woes? Focus on jobs and mortgage relief - and clean up the tax system.
Fortune reports that President Bill Clinton presided over one of the most robust economies in American history. And while some of his success may have been a result of timing and some luck, his leadership his ability to create a consensus, in particular surely had a role and has some people waxing nostalgic over Clintonomics. (Wouldn't you know that Clinton has a new book on the economy, Back to Work, coming out Nov. 8.) Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer met to discuss current economic events with the 42nd President, who was in the midst of his annual Clinton Global Initiative extravaganza in New York City. Edited excerpts:
How to fix the economy and create jobs
First, Congress and President Obama can adopt strategies designed to unleash the massive amount of capital that is accumulated but not being invested. There's some $2.2 trillion in cash in American banks that is not committed to loans. A couple hundred billion has to be held back for bad mortgages, but there's about $2 trillion that could be used in cash reserves for up to $20 trillion in loans. So, in theory, that would take the world out of recession. And U.S. corporations have about $2 trillion more that they have decided not to invest.
The second thing is to accelerate the resolution of the home mortgage crisis, which would make businesses more eager to borrow, expand and consumers more willing to spend. These kinds of financial crises typically take about five years to get over. What we're really trying to do is beat the historical trend by getting over it more quickly. We can't do that unless we do on a larger scale what we did in the S&L crisis, which is to flush the debt quicker.
The third category includes things that will strengthen our position today and tomorrow. We need to bring back manufacturing. We need to focus on exports. We need to focus on green technologies. There are dozens of things we could do that would create jobs…..
More? Check out http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/10/07/bill-clinton-economy-interview/?iid=Popular
No comments:
Post a Comment