In a CNBC interview JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon celebrated the manifold strengths of America that will drive the next economic boom:<\/p>\n
“This country not only has the best military on the planet, it has got the best universities, the best businesses, it\u2019s got low corruption, the widest and deepest capital markets, it\u2019s hugely innovative from Steve Jobs to the factory floor, it\u2019s got a wonderful work ethic.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got a royal straight flush.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have a divine right to succeed but we have an unbelievable hand if we play it well.\u00a0 And now we have natural gas, shale oil.\u00a0 America is going to come back, and it\u2019s going to blow people\u2019s socks off when it does.”<\/p>\n
In Dimon\u2019s America, excellence and dynamism are widely dispersed; it\u2019s not all about Wall Street or corporate America.\u00a0 Obama\u2019s America, by contrast, is all about Washington.\u00a0 In a New York Times<\/b> interview after the Galesburg speech, it sounded like Washington could grow \u201cthe economy\u201d and a \u201cstrong middle class\u201d the way a farmer grows cucumbers and corn:<\/p>\n Frankly, I am not sure how Washington can \u201cgrow the economy.\u201d I thought individual businesses and workers did that. Obama plans to \u201cstrengthen American manufacturing,\u201d but U.S. firms do not need Federal \u201cmanufacturing innovation institutes.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cRebuilding infrastructure\u201d has merit, but wasn\u2019t the $800 billion \u201cstimulus\u201d package supposed to do that?<\/p>\n Obama dislikes unfettered businesses because they supposedly grow the economy from the \u201ctop down\u201d rather than \u201cfrom the middle out,\u201d whatever that means.\u00a0 In his endless Galesburg speech he named only three U.S. companies: Maytag (which moved a factory from Galesburg to Mexico) and then Costco and the Container Store, which were commended for treating their employees well\u2014as though the rest of corporate America did not.\u00a0 A few other items were notable as we head toward an autumn showdown on the debt ceiling:<\/p>\n Making Jimmy Carter Look Good<\/b><\/p>\n Late in his hapless presidency Jimmy Carter addressed structural inflation by starting to deregulate industries, a process Ronald Reagan continued.\u00a0 But Carter was a successful farmer who understood business and the costs of over-regulation. Obama does not. He denies, for example, that Obamacare impedes hiring, and he dismisses the employment potential of the Keystone Pipeline, pegging it at an implausibly low 2000 jobs. It\u2019s a little weird to read a windy, bombastic, tedious, repetitive speech about creating middle class jobs, and then hear Obama flippantly dismiss a real-world opportunity to actual do it. \u00a0(\u201cLet them eat Federal programs!\u201d)<\/p>\n Unfortunately the costs of overregulation are becoming so obvious that even the liberal Financial Times<\/b> editorial page has noticed.\u00a0 Echoing arguments I have been making for well over a year, Edward Luce writes that Dodd Frank has improved the competitive position of giant banks (which can afford platoons of lawyers) at the expense of small community banks and the entrepreneurs they lend to.\u00a0 Result: a decline in small business creation.\u00a0 To be fair to Obama, I have yet to hear many mainstream Wall Street economists highlight the growth-suppressing impact of Obamanomics. I guess it wasn\u2019t in the Econ 401 syllabus.<\/p>\n Copyright Thomas Doerflinger 2013.\u00a0 All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a CNBC interview JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon celebrated the manifold strengths of America that will drive the next economic boom: “This country not only has the best military on the planet, it has got the best universities, the … Continue reading \n
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