Euphoria Lacking
Wesbury, Brian S.
"Euphoria Lacking" corn millionaire who in 2000 spent over $1 million of his own money to get elected to the state board of education, a nonpaying position. Now he is spending even more to tout the idea that Colorado...
...real signs of life...
...If triangulation is the political strategy du jour, the investor class may decide it wants a Democratic president, not a Republican one...
...30 percent, nondefense government The problem is that investors have spending is increasing faster than it other things to worry about...
...LPL's technology is impressive...
...What is most disturbing is that this lack of confidence is occurring despite strong productivity growth and a rebounding economy...
...Looking a Republican one...
...If Republicans can win back control of the Senate, President Bush may find further triangulation unnecessary The rewards from productivity growth can resume, and the United States will avoid slipping into a negative policy spiral...
...Some of it is brand new...
...The same story can be told for most sectors of the economy...
...Between 1982 and 1999, by contrast, stocks grew at a 15.6 percent annual rate, while real GDP was expanding an average of only 3.5 percent annually...
...Even the normally liberal Denver Post is cool to Mr...
...Each of these policies sup-Despite its great performance on the ported economic growth and wealth war and security, and a good start on creation...
...Despite the collapse of technology sector stocks and assurances from the cynics that the late 1990s was a bubble, the promise of the New Era is being fulfilled...
...is not the best place to invest anymore," said Wolfram Gerdes, chief investment officer for global equities at Dresdner Investment Trust in Frankfurt, Germany, quoted in a front page New York Times piece in late June...
...It recently editorialized that "the idea of registering on Election Day would gladden the hearts of NewYork City's old Tammany Hall tigers, who routinely shifted battalions of voters from precinct to precinct in pursuit of their `vote early, vote often' philosophy" Indeed, the untold story of Florida's 2000 election controversy was the number of suspect ballots that could have affected the outcome...
...So ed in the 2002 stimulus bill does not far the main result is a marginal shift offset high U.S...
...Overlooked by gulated, welfare reform, a capital most of Wall Street is a disturbing gains tax cut and free trade were the shift in the direction of fiscal policy...
...Language, money the printing press, internal combustion engines, computer chips and software—all lifted wealth by making people more productive...
...but they are easy to overestimate...
...Polis' idea...
...In recent years, a renaissance of sorts has occurred in America...
...some will not go online for a few months, but all of it will be considered essential in a relatively short time...
...For the most part, that progress has been relatively consistent...
...The current disconnect between the economy and equity prices is a clear signal that negative trends have developed...
...Also on the horizon is a potential Eventually, the accounting scandals wave of interference in how compawill subside and many believe that vies do business, as Congress address-WorldCom was the last of these big es accounting issues...
...Not good...
...The Miami Herald reviewed a third of Florida's counties and found that more than 1,200 votes were cast illegally by felons...
...Unfortunately, for those who had to live through certain periods in history, there has been some backsliding...
...The last thing we want is another Florida...
...Let's not make it easier for voters like Ms...
...Living standards followed...
...Brian S. Wesbury is chief economist at Grin, Kubik, Stephens &Thompson, a Chicago-based investment bank...
...It allows real-time access to client accounts, streamlines the order process, rids the company of excess paper and dramatically boosts account-representative productivity...
...He is considered the invention inspires real confidence in our tor of "triangulation" as a political long-term security...
...That promise was, and is, increasing productivity—what collectively allows us to accomplish more each working day...
...Given this history of abuse, it makes sense to tread carefully when millionaires put forward pet political causes such as same-day registration...
...Israeli suggests that environmental regulasoldiers were raking Arafat's head- tion could be in the cards...
...The history of voter registration is rife with stories of fraud and outrageous disenfranchisement...
...Thigpen to show their devotion...
...If hyperventilation about the dawning triangulation is the political strategy of a new Reagan-inspired era, as tax du jour, the investor class may decide cuts passed and the Kyoto protocols it wants a Democratic president, not were shot down in flames...
...Greater efficiency and more productive processes are the lifeblood of our economy...
...He urged them to use more...
...As the liberal writers Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward have pointed out, political machines like Tammany Hall and Richard Daley's Chicago swelled voter rolls with the names of the dead...
...In addition, the temporary tions in France, for example, have acceleration in depreciation includ- put serious tax cuts on the table...
...Cora Thigpen, aged 90, admitted to voting for Al Gore and being proud of it: "If I had voted a half-dozen times, I would have voted every time for Al Gore...
...wealth creation will begin to erode...
...of misguided legislation that under-At first, there was a great deal of mines risk-taking and investment...
...The full potential of the Internet and real-time computer databases has yet to be tapped, but will be shortly...
...After the malaise of the 1970s, productivity growth has improved dramatically, with durable goods manufacturing productivity up 5.0 percent per year in the 1990s...
...Microchip quarters with machine gun fire, a new manufacturers face a price-fixing Osama bin Laden videotape is sup- investigation by the Justice Departposedly on its way, and July 4th ter- ment, Amtrak is being bailed out, and rorism fears are on the rise...
...At the same time, interest rates have fallen, inflation is in check and the economy is showing JULY/AUGUST 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 15 ward spiral begins, it usually continues...
...In the nine months to December 2001, productivity continued rising, more rapidly than in any recession since 1949...
...resources...
...back now, however, these successes Combining this leftward drift in are less than euphoria-inducing...
...The mix of policy we are seeing These compromises are just the today has not occurred since the tip of the iceberg...
...Between 1965 and 1982, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.2 percent per year, even though real GDP expanded at a 2.9 percent average annual rate.The reason for the disconnect between stocks and the economy was obvious: Bad fiscal policy and inflationary monetary policy drove interest rates up and reduced the willingness of investors to take risks...
...Poll taxes, literacy tests and other obstacles were used until the 1960s to discourage voting among immigrants in the North and blacks in the South...
...There is unanimous agreement that the U.S...
...But that's exactly what same-day registration would make more likely...
...And yet this year at least, all that productivity growth has not helped the stock market one iota...
...The Dark Ages, for example, saw an actual decline in living standards...
...Fortunately, the Renaissance followed...
...Meanwhile, the Dow driven up steel prices by as much as has been pounded...
...But when President Bush fiscal policy, the Bush administration triangulates, the result is a hangover has dropped the ball on the economy...
...Israel and Palestine may corporate America, though presumnever find a true peace in my life- ably temporary, has virtually ended time, but some sort of order is any chance for the privatization of ' bound to appear...
...This makes November's mid-term elections even more crucial...
...Worse still, once the down16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • JULY/AUGUST 2002...
...Protectionism has 1970s...
...Now he is spending even more to tout the idea that Colorado is somehow putting insuperable barriers to voting by requiring registration in advance...
...No Bush adminisnoise made by many critics the tration official is likely to argue for it same people who argued we would as the investor class becomes wary be mired for a decade in I blame Dick Morris for this poi-Afghanistan—the Bush administra- icy shift...
...result...
...And despite the Social Security...
...In addition, in Duval County alone, 499 votes were cast by unregistered voters...
...That is the power of policy...
...Falling tax rates, slower growth in government spending, and lower inflation and interest rates all boosted incentives and rewards for risk-taking...
...policy with a very easy monetary The tax-cut package included a policy sets the stage for more serious Keynesian-style, demand-oriented problems ahead, especially when rebate, and phases out in 2011—a Europe, by contrast, seems to be real impediment to long-term plan- moving to the right...
...Recent elecning...
...In the first quarter of 2002, non-farm productivity grew at an 8.4 percent annualized rate, its strongest performance since the second quarter of 1983, when the economy was exiting the worst recession since the Great Depression...
...As I has in 20 years, and backtracking write,WorldCom became the latest in from the EPA on global warming a long list of corporate scandals...
...be worrying about are hard- When President Clinton trianer to see...
...It is a recipe for bedlam at the polls, greater voter cynicism about the integrity of elections and the throwing of more contested races into the courts...
...EUPHORIA LACKING BY BRIAN S. WESBURY Last month in San Diego, I heard a senior executive from LPL Financial Services, Inc., the number-one independent broker-dealer in the United States, tell more than 2,000 of his company's representatives that they were using barely a quarter of the technology the company had available...
...If not, optimism about the future path of U.S...
...Without rising productivity, there can be no long-term progress, no increase in living standards and no steadily rising stock market...
...Loss of faith in confessions...
...strategy—the idea being that a presOVERLOOKED ISSUES ' ident should co-opt the policies of the opposing party, in order to appeal The things we really should to voters in the middle...
...And during the recent recession, astonishing those who belittled the idea of an economic "New Era," productivity has remained very strong...
...United Airlines looks likely to receive Those are all serious problems, a $1.8 billion bailout...
...Productivity is supposed to boost corporate profits, and according to Commerce Department figures, profits were indeed up sharply between September and March...
...corporate tax rates in the direction of capital flows and and will shift economic activity for- a weaker dollar.This is only a hint of ward, encouraging a misallocation of what could lie ahead...
Vol. 35 • July 2002 • No. 4
