While you were dragging the men who made your happiness possible to your sacrificial altars, I beat you to it. I reached them first and told them about the game you were playing and where it would take them. I explained the consequences of your 'brother-love' morality, which they had been too innocently generous to understand. You won't find them now, when you need them more than ever. We're on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties.
-- Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
Businesses are not hiring. Despite months of "recovery", job growth in 2010 has been paltry to non-existent. Now we know why:
Corporate America is hoarding a massive pile of cash. It just doesn't want to spend it hiring anyone.
Nonfinancial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash, roughly one-quarter more than at the beginning of the recession. And as several major firms report impressive earnings this week, the money continues to flow into firms' coffers.
Yet all the good news from big business hasn't translated into much promise for jobless Americans, leading many to wonder: If corporations are sitting on so much money, why aren't they hiring more workers?
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
President Obama met this week with Warren Buffet and Bill Clinton to try to figure the situation out.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, however, has an answer for him: "We've gone Galt".
According to the Chamber, the lack of job growth is all Obama/Pelosi/Reid's fault:
The congressional leadership and the administration . . . vilified industries while embarking on an ill-advised course of government expansion, major tax increases, massive deficits, and job-destroying regulations . . . By straying from the proven principles of American free enterprise, policymakers are needlessly prolonging the economic agony of the recession for millions of Americans and their families.
. . .
Through their legislative and regulatory proposals — some passed, some pending, and others simply talked about — the congressional majority and the administration have injected tremendous uncertainty into economic decision making and business planning. This is why banks are reluctant to lend and why American corporations are sitting on well over a trillion dollars.
Jobs for America, an Open Letter to the President of the United States, the United states Congress, and the American People, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, July 14, 2010.
So, what would the Chamber in their infinite wisdom have us do in order to bring an end to their temper tantrum? I bet you can guess (hint: it starts with "neo" and ends with "liberalism"):
- Extend the Bush Tax Cuts ("temporarily")
- Cut the Federal Deficit
- "Drill, Baby, Drill": oil, gas, shale, forests
- Free Trade Agreements: Columbia, Panama, South Korea, Doha
- Privatize Infrastructure Development
- Ease the Regulatory Burden: "Each time a new regulatory proposal is even floated in Washington, investors in the potentially impacted industries close their wallets."
http://www.uschamber.com/...
So there you have it. Corporate America has officially "gone Galt". Unless Obama and the Democrats adopt their neoliberal agenda, they are going to just sit on their money and wait, as 20 million people sink further into despair for lack of work, while the rest of us pray that we don't join them.
I guess the final option is an FDR-style direct federal jobs program, putting everyone to work for the government. But then Obama would have deal with a force even greater and more ruthless than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: the bond market . . .
I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.
-- James Carville, 1993.
After having their risky bets gone south covered by a multi-trillion dollar avalanche of federal cash, the "bond market" will now ensure that fiscal "responsibility" is returned to Washington, and massive federal hiring and fiscal responsibility just don't really go together.
Whither from here?