Sounds like a warmed over George W Bush. No new ideas here.

Obviously, some things about the current business and political environments are working for these “risk averse” companies. Otherwise they wouldn’t be rolling in so much casj while scores of unemployed face such hardship.

Use excessive cash reserves on new ventures creating jobs, on r&d for alternative fuel sources, etc. and your core business will still be safe and sound. I’m not buying the argument that the extra cash will somehow protect the core business in uncertain times. Use the cash to create certainty.

Anyway, hoarding all that cash throws some serious doubt on trickle down theories. You can’t say on the one hand to let us keep this cash and we’ll create jobs, and on the other we won’t spend the cash because we’re scared.

No Free Lunch Up and Down the Seventh

An engineer described the 24/7 news cycle. Up is down. Down is up. The story of Shirley Sherrod’s life edited by the new media, picked up by the old media, while tainting new and old national press along with the White House, the USDA, and NAACP. It sidelined another major legislative accomplishment. On July 21, President Obama signed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The 2,300 pages begin to hold Wall Street accountable.

Republican Pat Meehan wrote in his published print op ed on July 18 and this online version above, “It is clear to me the $1.84 trillion in cash is being hoarded as insurance against unknown but feared burdens from government”. Federal Reserve “figures show that non-financial companies in the United States have socked away $1.84 trillion in cash and other liquid assets as of the end of March”. Concluding, “In short, when the business community sees an administration and a Congress that will legislate and regulate effectively and predictably, the business community’s confidence will return. That is why we need a new Congress. With its confidence back, businesses will put that $1.84 trillion to work hiring and investing.”

This is the classic free lunch. There are no free lunches. My undergraduate degree at Drexel University in accounting and economics and my masters degree at the London School of Economics were paid mostly through my cooperative education work at PriceWaterhouse Coopers. As a number crunching professional, I absorbed the thinking and doing required of being pro-business. At Drexel, my courses included books by Peter Drucker. A corporation, big or small, is sustainable as a for profit entity only if it does two things well. It produces a good or service for the market of value. Also, it is held accountable through regulation of government and by public opinion deeming it as serving the community by the simple act of purchasing its product or service over the long run. Good government and good business working together create wealth and value. The alternative is allowing unmitigated greed to win.

Pat Meehan ignores the successes of the President and this Congress in passing the following legislation: economic stimulus, healthcare reform, the jobs bill, the unemployment benefits extension, and Wall Street reform as well as other important public-private executive decisions: negotiating the BP escrow account; appointing Ken Feinberg to preside over the payouts to compensate those affected by the massive Gulf oil spill; and, choosing Admiral Thad Allen of the US Coast Guard to command the clean up operations in the Gulf overseeing the federal government and BP.

The Gulf crisis could be used as a Peter Drucker best practices guide to good business and good government partnering to solve the real future worst case scenario. A public-private partnership must break the worldwide oil addiction. As Kevin Costner offered, “Worst-case scenario is four of these happen, five of these happen. I’m the actor with the magic machine. The repercussions are terrible, but for us to think this is the worst to happen, I think that’s a lack of planning, a lack of foresight. “ In Pennsylvania, we could apply that model to the drilling of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale play. Senator Specter could lend his considerable leadership skills to championing this project in retirement. Congressman Joe Sestak and his successor could work for passage of his sponsored legislation to close the Halliburton Loophole. Done correctly, we can start down the path to clean energy sooner rather than later without poisoning our state’s water.

Seventh district voters should not be convinced that our recovery will happen by the free lunch approach of cutting the deficit: not spending and not raising taxes. In January 2010, the United States was facing this general ledger summary: a deficit created by two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. Analyzing Congressional Budget Office numbers, David Leonhardt of The Times calculated that of the projected $2 trillion swing into the red between the Clinton surplus and 2012, some 33 percent could be attributed to Bush legislation and another 20 percent to Bush-initiated spending (Iraq, TARP) continued by Obama. Only 7 percent of the deficit could be credited to the Obama stimulus bill and 3 percent to his other initiatives. The business cycle accounts for the other 37 percent. Our next Congressperson will need to understand the income statement and balance sheet of his district’s for profit and not-for-profit entities; otherwise, there will be no lunch to earn, to buy, to prepare or to eat for any of us.

E. Teresa Touey
38 South Scott Avenue
Glenolden PA 19036

the one question…burning deep within me and other voters in the 7th-DOES MEEHAN HAVE A SINGLE THOUGHT OF HIS OWN OR DO THEY ALL COME FROM REPUBLICAN CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE? who ever said this is warmed over GWB is dead on, but you forgot reagan and ghwb…voodoo/trickle-down economics that creates a powerful upper class and smaller middle class and larger poverty level class who are available to do the menial jobs…this guy meehan is a dope and a bum and a part of the slimy DELCO republican machine…never had a tough campaign thrown at him…never really vetted by the US Senate…paper tiger.

You don’t build 1.8 trillion in cash on razor thin margins.