What to Expect from Mr. Rosenblatt: More Capital Spending

The visitors are not coming because of the absence of the new street-scape.  It is the absence of relevant businesses, lack of a friendly environment and a missing leadership in shaping the kinds of business that are needed, and, please, not more tall buildings.

Friends, you will get more taxes from Mr. Rosenblatt.

But the biggest challenge of the BID still remains: getting the Streetscape Project off the paper before it is too late and visitors of downtown Coral Gables move to other sites. “We have to make sure we get this project done before downtown starts to underperform, Rosenblatt said. “We will have to partner up with city and residents so this is a priority that happens for everybody.

via Miracle Mile streetscape in limbo – Coral Gables – MiamiHerald.com.

China and India–Don’t Believe Everything You Read

This is a very useful review of the successes, failures, weaknesses and challenges in both economies–China and India.  Can such systems survive without overcoming the deficiencies of corruption, centralization and rural poverty?

 

Powerful political families run many Chinese state-owned enterprises. Indeed, there is some evidence that the overwhelming majority of multi-millionaires in China are relatives of high-ranking Communist Party officials. And, thanks to the large pool of savings generated by Chinese households and state-owned companies, the Chinese economy can for the time being bear the waste and misallocation implied by such crony capitalism.

Without political reform, the long-run viability of such a system is in doubt. Premier Wen himself indicated as much in a speech in August that was widely noted abroad, but largely blacked out in Chinese media. The global media should now go further, and begin to examine the many features of the rise of China and India that depart from the simplistic narrative of the triumph of market reform.

via China and India Exposed by Pranad Bardhan – Project Syndicate.

Don’t US Politicians Understand This?

If the Europeans continue to fight among themselves, regarding who bears what losses – and who has to face what kind of public accountability – which other countries gain on the global stage?

Who has the ready money available to recapitalize the International Monetary Fund, if needed?  And it will be needed if Spain comes under serious pressure.

Who understands the strategic concept that piles of “reserve currency” can give you great political leverage?  It is hard to find such thinking among today’s generation of American politicians.

And who is already playing international economic chess at the highest level?

China.

via Who Gains From The Eurozone Fiasco? China « The Baseline Scenario.

Rubio is Not a Keynesian, After All

This sounds to me like the Marco Rubio of Tallahassee ( and his famous 100 ideas!)–his fight for distant issues and achieved little actual progress in deficit and tax reduction.

From Marco Rubio,

“The past two years provided a frightening glimpse at what could become of our great nation if we continue down the current path: wasteful spending, a growing debt and a government reaching ever further into our lives, even into our health care decisions,” he said. “It is nothing short of a path to ruin …”

…“This means preventing a massive tax increase scheduled to hit every American taxpayer at the end of the year. It means repealing and replacing the disastrous health care bill. It means simplifying our tax code, and tackling a debt that is pushing us to the brink of our own Greece-like day of reckoning.”

Rubio’s warning – and threat to the White House – sounds almost apocalyptic, as if the election campaign continues. Which, in a way, it does.

via President Obama, Marco Rubio face off on tax cuts – CSMonitor.com.

Dear Mr. Rubio,

Most of the debt came from the Bush Administration, the TARP, the Obama stimulus package and the fall in the economy that cut tax revenue; it is almost impossible to make a difference by eliminating “wasteful spending” (all newly elected politicians want to end wasteful spending not affecting their state or district); government overreaching (do forget war spending, the TARP passed by President Bush and a stimulus package a lot of which was tax cuts) that saved the banks, GM, and about 2 to 3 million jobs; the government is already deeply embedded in our health care in medicare and medicaid; the tax decrease in January for the rich will cause a huge increase on our debt and deficit of at least $700 billion without creating jobs.

Yes, we need to deal with the debt caused by mismanagement of the financial system by prior governments, the current government and the need to grow jobs.  Let’s see if you and the others in Washington are willing to cut social security, medicare, medicaid, but, above all raise taxes to pay the bill.

This will be interesting.