How exactly does the issue of sovereign wealth funds buying up US financial corporations have anything to do with the current account deficit? sure, sure there are macro economic connections like the exchange rate, but that is not enough to explain why these companies need to be bailed out. The real reason, the one they don’t say, has absolutely nothing to do with the spending and saving habits of average citizens, or of the US government, it is pure and simple — the US managerial class has screwed the pooch. They have engaged in a long term sustained attempt to 1) ‘manage’ without knowing anything or caring about long term business issues, rather relying on financial wizardry to cover over problems with short term gimmicks, and 2) sustained manipulation of the US political system to prevent oversight, and ensure that the US government is insolvent and unable to act in an effective manner. So Peterson seeming ‘straight shooting’ was nothing but the most convoluted spin job.

There is absolutely no way I would watch an hour of that fawning, self serving, ‘look how smart I am’ crap.

The fact that the US is at a juncture where foreign capital is able to buy up the largest and most powerful corporations (other than oil) is a sign that the managers of Peter Petersons era were just as incompetent as the fools that lived on negative savings because housing would go up forever. That doesn’t now make him a font of wisdom. That makes him a lying asshat. He and people like him control this government, and have been manipulating the US political scene in favor of ‘free market economics’ — whose real purpose is precisely the destruction of the federal government — for 30 years now. All the fawning of charlie rose does not change the fact that these guys are responsible for what is happening, not the fools buying houses at 1%. The FEDs move to 1% can be clearly traced to between Greenspan and the White House, and the obvious purpose was to prop up the administration politically — and it worked like a champ.

I’ll start believing this oh so serious and sane commentator just as soon as he starts talking reality.

In the meantime, hasnt the Blackstone IPO turned out to be another classic financial industry con? I seem to recall some real issues there but haven’t kept up.

What a joke!

you are absolutely correct about Petersons comment re Clinton / gore doing their part balancing the budget,..

AND Charlie Rose cut him off…very noticeable

I have respect for this guy because I think he does try to call it as he sees it.

But it is true — Petersen and Rose scratch their heads, “Why is no one saving?” Have they opened up a savings acount lately? You get 3% a year. It’s retarded. Cash money is the scarcest thing in the world right now and yet I get 3.5% on a 6 month CD? Greenspan and Bernanke have been pummeling savers into submission for a decade…

I also thought it was hilarious when Petersen started talking about how Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin balanced the federal budget and Charlie Rose wouldn’t let him finish — literally cut him off. We dare not talk about how the most fiscally conservative President of the last 40 years was a democrat! Lol…

1) Why should we save more when interest rates are 3-5% and then taxed at 40% rates?

2) Is America wealthier or poorer than 10yrs ago? 20 yrs ago? Does this have anything to do with the “savings rate”?

3) Blackstone is a massive debtor (through leveraged deals) yet you, the firm, and your clients seem to be doing pretty well? Should you “save more”?

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Similar non-sense on the entitlements front. I am not “in debt” because I expect to retire nicely yet I have little in savings. I have 30 years, incomes tend to skyrocket (analogous to the growing US economy). Why should we put future liabilities on the books today?

If we just increase the eligibility age for SS and Medicare by 1-month per year going forward — every one of these problems disappears.

1-month / per year! (thats really slow…)

M

Sorry, but I think he suffers from cognitive dissonance.

Want to cut the cost of health-care in this country? Cut out the middleman (insurance companies). Want people to put money in savings? Pay them a decent living wage. Want to reduce the amount of money leaving the country? Start investing in renewable energy resources.

High inflation would prompt people to save less. So would low interest rates on savings accounts. So would low interest rates on US treasury bonds (thanks to the foreign capital inflow that the bureaucrats in Washington are addicted to). A rotten return on the US stock market would help explain why the savings rate is low. In part, savings were destroyed. Savings shrink because people see the stock market is in decline and they don’t buy.

Their savings rate is down because taxes are too high. The government takes the taxes to pay for foreign aid and free health care for illegal aliens.

The real inflation rate is a lot higher than the BLS inflation rate. Per capita income has not kept up. People are worse off than they were before 9/11.

Unprecedented illegal immigration has depressed real wages and pushed up corporate profits.

It’s a classic pump and dump scam.

Look, this cannot be any plainer. Even if one accepts the asinine economic assumptions of the current administration’s appointees as Social Security Trustees (all who held the position that Social Security should be scrapped and given to Wall Street before they were appointed), projections by the Congressional Budget Office indicate that Social Security can pay 100% of benefits through 2052, then direct Social Security revenue will cover about 80% of the cost of benefits thereafter (this assumes, just as one example, that you accept the trustee’s economic opinion that GDP over the next 75 years will be LESS THAN HALF what it was over the previous 75 years).

In the present day, with the U.S. government outside of Social Security, revenue covers only about 68% of total government spending. So FORTY-FOUR YEARS FROM NOW, even utilizing their twisted economic assumptions, Social Security will be in MUCH better financial shape than the rest of the U.S. government is TODAY.

Our long run federal deficit and debt problems stem from plummeting federal income tax revenues as a result of failed tax rate cuts for the Rich & Corporate, not Social Security. Once again, Social Security is more financially sound today than it has been throughout most of its 72-year history.
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Ray says we’ll have desktop replicators in some of our lifetimes!

I think a lot of us value Concord Foundation and Running on Empty bankers.