More Congressional Horrors

The topic of the Congressional hearing I’m about to address may not resonate with many readers, but as someone who designs investment portfolios professionally, the potential recklessness of the politicians involved astounded me.

The House Education & Labor Committee grilled the head of the Pension Benefit & Guaranty Corporation, which is the backstop for U.S. company’s pensions. The PBGC takes over the administration and allocation of pension assets that corporate sponsors can no longer support. Like most pensions and other large institutional investors, it takes a quantitative and very analytical approach to its responsibilities including the design and implementation of an "investment policy".

An institutional investment policy is a document that estimates the future liabilities of an investment fund, and designs a portfolio allocation around them with various constraints. It is a basic requirement of sound long term investing. And the main objective of a policy allocation is to diversify risk and minimize volatility for the given level of returns required to satisfy those future obligations. According to the testimony, the PBGC has 70% of its assets in bonds, and 30% in risky assets, and the total portfolio declined in value by roughly 6% in the current crisis. Many investors would feel pretty good about that. And over long enough periods, a pension should be able to recover from a 6% loss in one year without too much trouble.

Here’s the problem — Committee Chairman George Miller of California, along with some of his fellow members, is up in arms about the fact that PBGC assets are at risk, and that the riskier part of the portfolio has lost 23% of its value during the market meltdown. First, what counts to the well being of the PBGC (and the pensioners who rely or will rely on it) is the overall portfolio performance, not what happens to one slice of it. And in risky assets, periods of poor performance should absolutely be expected — it’s WHY you diversify assets. Over the long run, a well designed portfolio gets you where you need to go with less overall risk. And yet Rep. Miller is addressing the PBGC like a hysterical client might address their stock broker. At a time when the PBGC should be focused on rebalancing to take advantage of depressed prices for risky assets, the folks on Education & Labor appear to want to pull the plug entirely! That would be a severe disservice to the people who rely on the future ability of the PBGC to pay benefits, but ironically, Miller et al claim to be acting in the interests of current and future pensioners. Hmmm…who would they rather have that additional 30% invested with? Oh, right, the U.S. Treasury…

The Representatives I heard, especially Miller (though he seems like a nice enough guy), were all over the map conceptually. That’s OK if you’re not an expert. But in that case, one ought to listen more than they tell — it is a hearing after all, not a lashing. Instead, he engaged in some bizarre, rambling, and preposterous observations, and many of the members implicitly threatened to impose drastic changes — to basically retreat from an approach that has been diligently developed and improved upon over five decades, and seen its share of Nobel Prizes. Examples of Miller’s nonsense include talking about the PBGC’s investment policy as though it’s some secretive document (it’s not, and policies are very generic documents); arguing that despite the witness’ solid defense of PBGC’s approach to allocation, Wall Street was "littered" with plans by the smartest folks in the room (displaying a profound ignorance of the difference between a conservatively managed pension fund and a highly levered investment bank, or market maker in an unregulated derivative); and claiming that the survival of BRIC countries ‘ economies (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) is now in doubt (!), despite them being investment "havens" not too long ago. Good grief! Emerging markets, like every other risky asset, are never considered a haven in investment policy design, even when they’re expected to appreciate dramatically. It’s frightening that people so ignorant of this area, and so anxious to "do something", have so much power over an institution as important as the PBGC.

Politically, given all of the economic and historical ignorance afoot, the vacuum of compelling economic leadership, and all of the uncertainty this creates, we’re sailing into some choppy waters. Most of the country will feel good in November about electing Sen. Obama, and he’ll have an enormous amount of political capital to work with as his Administration begins, as it should. But almost everything we’re seeing as far as policy direction parallels the 1976 ascendancy of President Carter. And those who were alive then (many of today’s voters were not) will also recall that those were a tough four years for the economy.

Educating Bill

New Mexico Governor Bill Richards, a cabinet member in President Clinton’s administration, made a wildly inaccurate statement in a CNBC interview this morning when he claimed that a President Obama would not want to make "the [existing] tax cuts for corporations permanent".

People are prone to speaking errors, myself included, so I’m not posting this to embarass Gov. Richards. Rather, it belies a fundamental and widespread misunderstanding about our federal tax code, who it falls upon and how, and what the economic effects are. Given how critically important fiscal policy will be in both the next administration and over the next four decades, I felt that this misunderstanding needed to be addressed.

Corporations did receive two significant tax breaks under the current administration, but they were both temporary, and they have both expired. First, they were able to use accelerated depreciation and full tax expensing of certain costs. And second, U.S. multinationals were also able to bring dividends from their operations abroad back into the United States (so-called ‘repatriation of profits’) at a much lower tax rate. Note that both of these provisions, while stimulative of domestic  investment by corporations (which is critical to U.S. productivity and employment), did not favor all businesses. For example, non-capital intensive businesses that held no dividends offshore received no direct benefit from these provisions.

Given those facts, I can only assume that Gov. Richards had capital gains and dividend tax rates in mind. BUT THESE TAXES APPLY TO TAXABLE INVESTORS, NOT CORPORATIONS. Essentially, they encourage individuals to become stock market investors. INDIRECTLY, this can have a marginally positive effect on the cost of capital for corporations listed in the U.S., but that’s about it. It’s also very important to note that, in most cases, corporations have still had to pay the higher corporate rate on any realized capital gains and dividends. 

Why does this matter? Because capital formation through private business enterprise is absolutely critical to our economic future, and the way that the U.S. taxes those activities is becoming less and less competitive with much of the world. And under the current Congress, it has become quite apparent that we will become even less competitive on that issue (assuming most other countries don’t make worse errors than we do).  

Interestingly, New Mexico’s economic performance under Gov. Richards has been pretty good, and one of the keys to this performance has been lowering tax rates. Economists David and Christine Romer of UC Berkeley (we’ll point out again that Mr. Romer is reportedly an advisor to the Obama campaign) have produced research showing that taxes, especially those on corporate income, have a significant negative impact on employment and wages. Using data available on the website of a public-private organization dedicated to attracting businesses to New Mexico, we found that growth  in non-farm employment from 2005 to 2006 was 1.8% lower for every 1% rise in a state’s total median tax rate (the sum of the median sales and use, personal income, and corporate income tax rates). Economists, including the Romers, have also found that markets react to the mere news of negative developments in tax policy. Although some blame an "Obama Panic" as a factor in the market’s meltdown, we have been much stronger on the idea of a "110th Congress Panic" since 2007. The possibility that a President Obama would green light some of the lousier ideas that have been emanating from Congress certainly doesn’t help market expectations.

Unfortunately, these obvious connections are not making it into the current political debate. Part of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of some high profile executives’ and directors’ incompetence, and well publicized perceptions of corporate malfeasance; however, we continue to point out that, for example, out of the 5,000 companies in the Wilshire 5000, it’s fair to say that no more than 50 (a very liberal number), or 1%, contributed to the current crisis. Despite that, the immense loss of corporations’ social and political capital mean that the critical changes needed to make our tax code and our economy more competitive are far less likely to occur.

Instead, we’re very clearly headed down a path of public spending as the way to recovery. As we’ve argued before, infrastructure investment is fine and good, but not when the cart of public revenue is placed before the horse of private enterprise. Japan has, for the most part, tried the same approach to crawl out of its longstanding, real estate driven recession that began in 1989-1991. They’ve spent vast sums on public works, while their tax code has remained uncompetitive. The country’s economic performance has been pitiful, and asset prices have yet to recover meaningfully. There is no reason to believe that this approach (as it is currently outlined) will work for the U.S. either, despite the current enthusiasm for it. Moreover, where Japan has traditionally had a healthy household savings rate, U.S. households are still very leveraged. Thus, these public spending plans will be forced to rely heavily upon the goodwill of foreign savers. And remarkably, many of the same politicians who decried the expansion of U.S. debt in recent years (especially, for some peculiar reason, its ownership by the Chinese) are the same folks who are gung-ho to embark on massive public ‘stimulus’ plans. As Milton Friedman and my own mother are fond of saying, there ain’t no free lunch. Someone will have to pay the piper, and he’ll be paid through some combination of lower asset values and net worth, higher net unemployment, a marginal drain of human talent, opportunity costs if (as) capital is allocated suboptimally, and inflation or deflation along with associated exchange rate volatility.

URLs: 

http://www.nmpartnership.com/data-center/critical-site.php

Paul Krugman’s Nobel Prize

Economist Paul Krugman, who is best known nowadays for partisan screeds as an op-ed columnist at the NY Times, recently won a well deserved Nobel Prize for his work on trade and development theory. In a refreshing departure, he provided a nice, clear explanation of his theoretical work in a column this week. He briefly addresses the policy impacts of his work:

What determines which industry locates where? Often, accident: Silicon Valley owes its existence in large part to a couple of guys named Hewlett and Packard, who started some stuff in their garage, New York is New York because of a canal that only pleasure boaters use today…

You may ask, where’s the policy implication of all this? Actually, the policy morals are fairly subtle – for example new trade theory does suggest a possible role for government interventions, but also suggests bigger gains from trade liberalization. Mainly my work in trade and geography was about understanding the world, not driving a political agenda.

We harbor no doubts that luck (chance) plays a huge role in the development of any economy, as it does with the success of any venture (including investing!). But there are important considerations for policymakers, especially at our current political juncture. Trade is good, obviously. President Clinton clearly understood this, so it need not be a partisan issue. But it’s also interesting to think about how the incentives arising from regional (or national, or local) policies shape their respective economic geographies. For example, Krugman mentions the Rust Belt and the rise of the Sun Belt. Were there important policy factors that played a role in that process? Are those factors important for national policymakers given the integration of global trade and finance?

Krugman’s "economic geography" advanced classical trade theory in important ways. Looking ahead, we predict that theorists working in what might be called "economic topology", e.g., how social and political networks shape "geography", will win a fair share of future Nobels.

URLs:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/about-the-work/ 

More on Corporate Tax Code

The Tax Foundation has posted a good, short interview with economist Glenn Hubbard on the negative impact of corporate taxes. He discusses the effects on shareholders, workers, taxpayers, capital formation, and U.S. competitiveness. 

We recently updated our analysis of global corporate tax rates using KPMG’s annual survey. The findings are distressing if you make a living in the U.S., especially considering the empirical research that Hubbard alludes to in his interview. The following chart depicts the ratio between the U.S. corporate tax rate and the OECD corporate rate:

Except for a brief respite in 2003-2004 (thanks in part to Glenn Hubbard’s work on the Council of Economic Advisors), the trend has been dismal, increasing at 3% annual run rate (at that rate, it will take only eight years of bad policy for the ratio to start approaching two). It should also be noted that this is the ratio to corporate rates in developed OECD countries–it looks even worse when you include all countries in the KPMG survey. The evidence could not be any clearer that the U.S. has squandered its leadership role in tax policy. 

The Tax Foundation apparently follows the KPMG corporate tax survey as well, and reported the following:

The accounting firm KPMG has released its annual survey of corporate and indirect tax rates for 2008, and what it says about America’s tax competitiveness is not good… the U.S. continues to have one of the highest overall corporate tax rates in the world. Of the 106 countries surveyed, only The United Arab Emirates (55 percent), Kuwait (55 percent), and Japan (40.69 percent) impose a higher corporate tax rate than the combined rate of 40 percent in the U.S.

According to the KPMG report:

…the most remarkable result of our 2008 survey is that we have found no country anywhere that has raised its rate since last year. The global average is, once again, down nearly a full point to 25.9 percent with the EU average down to 23.2 percent, the Latin American rate down half a point to 26.6 percent, and the Asia Pacific rate down 0.8 percent to 28.4 percent.

This supports our contention that the U.S. is becoming less competitive simply by standing still, and that a worsening policy burden from D.C. will only make the situation worse. The review goes on to  put the evidence depicted in our chart into words: 

…the U.S. rate was higher than all other global regions in 1999 and the difference is even more dramatic today. According to KPMG’s figures, the U.S. rate is now 14.1 percentage points higher than the global average and nearly 17 percentage points higher than the average among European Union countries.

One more interesting piece of evidence on the insanity of our federal tax code was buried in section B of the WSJ today. It discusses a recent assessment by Moody’s that the U.S. drug industry is taking on more debt despite having ample cash in foreign operations:

Moody’s Investors Service said U.S. pharmaceutical companies have ample cash, but most of it is held outside the U.S. — making it costly to access because of the tax consequences…debt is rising industry-wide, suggesting companies are taking on debt to fund dividends, share buybacks or for other purposes.

Nine of the largest U.S. drug and biotechnology companies reported more than $105 billion in cash and investments as of June 30, said Moody’s. But "offshore cash is unlikely to be used for most purposes" unless a company is willing to absorb the tax hit…

The industry’s debt level rose nearly $28 billion to $83 billion over the 18 months ended June 30…

Moody’s noted that post-election tax reform "could open possibilities" to access offshore cash with less adverse tax consequences.

We can only hope. Any politician promising to "create jobs" should be able to see the crippling effect that taxing repatriated profits has on domestic investment and employment.  

Finally, if you’re looking for a comparison of the presidential candidates’ tax proposals, the Tax Foundation has posted one of the most concise comparisons out there.

URLs: 

http://www.taxfoundation.org/podcast/show/23765.html

http://www.kpmg.com/Global/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesAndPublications/Pages/Corporateindirecttaxsurvey2008.aspx 

http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/23621.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122403269133034961.html 

http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/23165.html

Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Here’s an interesting take on where we are in the financial crisis, from an investment management firm across the pond, via InvestorsInsight:

Despite consensus forecasts for corporate profits in 2009 being still way too happy — we are pencilling profits ex the banks for the MSCI World Index in 2009 of minus 9% – the return to an almost forgotten world of national and international cartels to reboot the economic cycle may well ensure that after a steep recession, a return to mild profit growth may be none too far away. The ‘death’ of free markets is sad: for a while we were all rich, it was fun and you didn’t have to work much either; just own a house and a lot of debt. The imminent brave new world of state directed banks and cartelisation of sectors is inherently corrupt and less efficient, but should work. It is certainly the least bad solution for us all; yet this very different and cartelised world could be rather interesting, and profitable. Although indices have every chance of a roaring bounce soon, in 2009 many will sink again.

There’s a similar, if more concise (and less interesting) piece from The Economist via CFO.com:

THE dithering has ended. After a week in which the financial system almost ground to a halt, governments of the industrialised world seem at last to have found the right tools to get credit markets moving again. At the weekend and early on Monday October 13th officials in Europe, America and Asia announced unprecedented and comprehensive plans to prop up failing banks, guarantee their loans and flood the world with cash by providing unlimited dollar funds through central banks. At first blush — and in contrast to previous failures after half-hearted efforts — the new plans seem to be working. Stockmarkets rose around the world on Monday, although the real sign that the situation is improving will come in the credit markets this week.  

We hope they’re right, and we agree that the trajectory of credit markets will provide critically important information in coming weeks. And, as Robert Lowell would remind us, we must be careful not to confuse the light at the end of the credit tunnel with the light of an oncoming recession.

URLs: 

http://www.investorsinsight.com/blogs/john_mauldins_outside_the_box/archive/2008/10/13/why-the-worst-will-soon-be-over.aspx 

http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/12411608?f=alerts 

McCain Campaign in Disarray

Today’s news that the McCain campaign was unable to settle on any economic plan is the latest evidence that the campaign is in utter disarray. To catch Sen. Obama at this point would surpass the Bad News Bears or even the Boston Red Sox. If misery loves company, they might want to spend some time with the Chicago Cubs in their respective off seasons…

Presented with 30 options for new economic measures, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has – at least for now – chosen none of them.

His campaign had been planning to roll out new proposals this week that would be aimed at restoring confidence in financial markets and encouraging investors to return…

But when the meeting ended, so did plans for a new economy push. The campaign now says no new policy announcements are planned. Participants in the meeting refused to say what happened.

“We’re locked down,” said one official.

His advisors surely understand that one of the biggest drags on our economy is the corporate tax code (and to a lesser extent, policies that distort the relative values of residential housing, medical benefits, astronomical executive compensation, etc.). Our biggest concern is that a sophomoric understanding of economics and finance is at work here, and that Sen. McCain is unwilling to talk up corporate tax cuts lest they be associated with executive compensation–when in reality, they are two very different things, with very different effects on domestic investment and employment.

URLs:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14508.html 

NY Post: “An Obama Panic?”

The NY Post carried an op-ed by CNBC commentator Charlie Gasparino entitled "An Obama Panic?". It’s a partisan piece in a partisan paper, but raises some important concerns that we’ve been attentive to since 2007. It also echoes concerns of many CEOs that we alluded to in a recent post:

…if [Obama] governs like a liberal ideologue – with a belief that the government that works best is the one that’s biggest and raises taxes the most – he won’t even have to work hard to get his way. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won’t stop him…

And the markets know this – even if pundits (even many of the financial ones) refuse to face it.

No one can blame the faltering stock market solely on Obama’s tax plans or McCain’s own inanity on economic issues. But stock prices reflect current market conditions plus best guesses of what’s coming down the road. And I keep hearing nervous traders and investors talk about "a lack of leadership from Washington."

On the Sen. McCain alternative:

…McCain hardly instills confidence among the Wall Streeters I speak to. Why has his campaign spent the last week focusing on Obama’s friendship with former terrorist William Ayers – when it should be hitting Obama’s blind loyalty to policies that bring together the worst elements of Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter?

That assessment of Sen. Obama’s policies is a bit harsh, and as Gasparino admits, we don’t yet know how he will govern (and if Congress were controlled by the Republicans, we would view an Obama presidency favorably). However, his aspersions are an accurate description of the 110th Congress, in our view. We maintain a laundry list of federal policy directions, and since 2007, the directions have become rather worrisome. Here’s a sampling: expiration of the 2003 tax cuts (i.e., a large net tax increase); Rep. Rangel’s corporate tax ‘reform’ that would both broaden the tax base AND raise the effective tax rate; threats to rescind corporate LIFO accounting at a time when global inflation was making itself apparent for the first time since the 1970s (LIFO accounting was introduced to help corporations deal with the negative tax effects of inflation); windfall profits taxes against oil companies; punitive threats against corporate inversions (locating corporate headquarters in lower tax jurisdictions) and transfer pricing (taking accounting advantage of business activities in lower tax jurisdictions); impotent fiscal "stimulus" plans and higher budget deficits; draconian (rather than well designed) energy mandates; ostracism of any point of view calling the climate change (ex-’global warming’) hypothesis and most appropriate policy measures into question; anti-business labor and health care policies; and more recently, threats to undermine defined contribution plans (interestingly, ERISA was also born out of the economic turmoil of the 1970s) as well as calls to re-regulate everything because deregulated free market enterprise has proven to be such a dismal and obvious failure (that, despite the fact that it’s working wondrously in many parts of the world, and despite the fact that every point of this crisis can be tied in some way to poorly designed public policies in the U.S.).

Gasparino’s assessment of the McCain campaign’s tactics is absolutely spot on however. Sen. Obama and the current Congress should be extremely vulnerable on these counts, but neither Sen. McCain nor Gov. Palin are well suited to the task. Had their campaign realized the importance of these issues earlier on, they could have been better suited to address them now. And as with Sen. Obama, no one really knows how effectively Sen. McCain would govern on economic issues. For example, Sen. Lindsey Graham claimed this weekend that McCain was going to argue for lower capital gains and dividend taxes. These are fine in isolation, but they are utterly foolish when looking at the financial (and coming economic) crises in total. In the coming days or weeks, we will try to issue a piece that explains why. For now, we’ll just point out that genuine corporate tax reform is the right place to focus, and also distortions inherent in our tax code. Neither candidate understands these areas. For example, McCain proposes that the government become the country’s mortgage bank, while Obama proposes a steeper tax break on mortgage related interest. Both of these would worsen the distortionary bias towards debt-financed residential real estate that helped get us into the current mess!

The bottom line? The best that markets and the economy can hope for is a political arrangement at the federal level that does the least damage. In other words, there is absolutely nothing to be optimistic about. The best that can be hoped for is to be pleasantly surprised once in awhile. No wonder markets have been showing a strong streak of pessimism since 2007.

URLs:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10132008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/an_obama_panic__133374.htm?page=0 

http://www.654advisors.com/newsandviews/newsandviews/2008101035.html 

CEOs: Obama = “Disaster”

Interesting results from a survey of 751 chief executives–neither presidential candidate is viewed very favorably on economic issues, which we would agree with. But 74% of them agreed with the statement that Senator Obama would be a "disaster" for the economy! Wow…

John McCain is the hands-down preference for president among chief corporate executives, according to a recent survey by Chief Executive magazine. Democratic hopeful Barack Obama fared miserably in the survey which showed a 4 to 1 preference for the Arizona senator.

In fact, 74 percent of the 751 CEOs surveyed believed Obama would be a disaster for the country.

McCain didn’t get overall high marks, however. According to the survey, McCain rates only a B minus grade. He got high marks for foreign policy and defense, but only a C plus on energy, education and environment.

We planned to post an observation here regarding the three week market meltdown and whether it can be attributed to any degree to Sen. Obama’s rise to near electoral certainty (based on the electoral college outlook). Obviously, that’s not the only factor, nor is it the primary one. But policy expectations matter to asset prices, and Sen. Obama’s campaign promises and rhetoric do not promise to be kind to public equity capital (to be fair, we think he would be a very effective President if Congress were not under full Democrat control).

To this point, the stock market has seemed to believe that Sen. Obama would be the second coming of President Carter, which is not a bad comparison policy-wise. However, yesterday’s closing decline seemed to put us into FDR/Herbert Hoover territory. And if we string together five or more of these 5-7% down days, we’ll eventually be discounting the arrival of Joseph Stalin in the White House. Reasonable minds should be able to agree that this is a preposterous notion, however negatively you might view a President Obama’s economic policies.

URLs:

http://blogs.bnet.com/ceo/?p=1418&tag=nl.e713 

A Small Dose of Good Medicine

There’s nothing funny about the credit bubble, the financial crisis, the economic contraction, or the market meltdown. But humor is one of the best antidotes for stress, and here’s a small dose–"Strategery Capital Management, LLC":

Strategery is a unique hedge fund.

It is the largest in the world, with expected initial capital of $700 billion. It has a free and unlimited credit line should it need more. It has no fixed mandate, though it is expected to initially focus on mortgage-backed securities. And it is the only fund backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government.

Strategery is a way for you to be more patriotic. Supporting this fund is an American duty. Criticizing this fund or any of its associated legislation or regulations may be subject to civil and criminal penalties.

We hope no one mixes up our two firms…

(Link via Poor and Stupid) 

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE: Strategery Capital Management, LLC is not even a real entity, never mind a hedge fund!!! Symmetry Capital Management, LLC (our firm) does not currently offer private placement services for hedge funds or any other entity. This blog post is not an offer to engage in a private placement, nor is it an offer to buy or sell any security public or private. It is an attempt to make you laugh, and nothing more!!!!

URLs:

http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/the-healing-power-of-humor/ 

http://strategerycapital.com/our-team 

CFO: U.S. Financial Superiority at an End?

Here’s a refrain that echoes observations expressed in some of our recent posts:

…America’s biggest global banks, desperate to rebuild capital ratios, are surviving on life-supporting cash infusions from sovereign wealth funds. Huge chunks of the once-vibrant securities markets in the United States, such as collateralized loan obligations and asset-backed mortgages, are moribund. And prominent international bankers, like HSBC group chairman Stephen Green, are declaring the end of Wall Street’s "center of the universe" status.

The numbers speak volumes. The combined domestic market capitalization of Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange, and the American Stock Exchange ($18.2 trillion as of last June) accounted for just 35 percent of the total on exchanges worldwide. That’s down from 52 percent in 2001, according to the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation (CCMR), an advocacy group. While the market capitalization of exchanges outside the United States has grown 22 percent since 2002, U.S. exchanges have seen their collective market cap rise only 9 percent. And today, when foreign companies go public outside their home countries, they choose the United States much less frequently.

These are inevitable trends, but their speed since 2001 is disconcerting. It’s also not surprising. Policymakers need to rethink current approaches to supporting U.S. competitiveness. We’ve leared that unbridled or poorly designed deregulation won’t cut it, but that in no way means that unbridled and poorly designed "re-regulation" will. Unfortunately, that’s where the pendulum is currently swinging, and the Presidential debate last night was dishearteningly devoid of constructive ideas for repairing American competitiveness. In fact, we don’t expect to see that occur for another 4 to 8 years.

URL:

http://www.cfo.com/printable/article.cfm/12294789/c_12323697?f=options