Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Chris Dodd's financial reform package is not the right step

Retiring Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) has presented what's called a "sweeping financial regulatory reform bill" by The Huffington Post, that's designed to prevent future Wall Street bailouts from occurring. But Senator Dodd's bill, while pointing to America's displeasure with Wall Street, is not the tonic that will help the country.

What's forgotten in all of this well-needed rush to reform the financial industry, is that the weak economy created this mess. Simple logic dictates that having good, well-paying jobs in many sectors, not just a few, will allow American workers to pay their loans. The popular idea is that sub-prime mortgages caused the economic problem the Obama Administration is working to get Americans out of. But that's not the problem, poor new job production has been the issue challenging America for most of the first decade of the 21st Century.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in February there were 1.2 million "discouraged workers" or people who could not find a job, and that was up 476,000 from a year earlier (2009). And that's one of a number of measures that show jobs are still the number one problem.

The best solution is one that the Obama Administration seems loath to adopt but right for its time: Economic Nationalism. The idea that domestic policies should cause the development of American-controlled production with the objective of increasing the jobs base. Economic Nationalism has been the basis for the growth of economies in Japan, Taiwan, China, and The European Union. The United States economy has been picked apart by worldwide economic nationalist policies.

The only way America will have a fighting chance to revive its economy is by replicating the economic policies and corporate strategies used against it for so many decades. Maintaining a healthly jobs-producing economy must be the first priority.

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