More from Carly Fiorina’s interview with Doug Sovern and Simon Perez yesterday – in addition to calling for tax cuts for the rich and claiming we don’t have to worry about how to pay for them, she also made several references to the need for higher unemployment:
Q: You cut jobs at HP, you know what it’s like to cut jobs, you made tough choices – so are you saying that you want to go to Washington, DC to cut jobs? Is that the argument to the people of California – ‘Send me to Washington, I know which jobs to cut, and I’ll cut them?’ Is that what people want to hear when they need jobs?
A: Well, look. It’s unacceptable that Californians are living with 12.6 unemployment and federal employees are growing at 14.5% a year. That is unacceptable. So yes, let us start with the basic proposition that the federal government shouldn’t be getting any bigger.
That’s why, by the way, I would have voted against the financial regulatory reform bill….Barbara Boxer’s solution is to create yet another agency, to hire yet more people.
Just so we’re clear, Fiorina believes that in the worst recession in 60 years, government should not be hiring to fill in the gap, that higher unemployment is good, that more federal employees should be laid off so that everyone is miserable.
What more evidence do we need that Fiorina does not understand how the economy works? She has no clue about the need for government to step in to provide stimulus and job creation when the private sector is not creating jobs.
As any actual small businessman will tell you, the problem is that they aren’t seeing customers. People won’t spend money because they don’t see recovery on the horizon and, in a balance sheet recession, they’re focused on using what money they do have to pay down debt, not to buy what a small business is selling.
Only government can step in to change this. Without government hiring and spending money, you see deflation and a long-term depression as the private sector, both households and businesses, take their time to purge debt. It’s the same phenomenon we saw from 1873 to 1896, and from 1929 to about 1939 or 1940, when World War II finally provided the massive stimulus to bring a permanent end to the Great Depression.
Fiorina shows she doesn’t understand the economy any better today than she did 5 years ago when she was fired as CEO of HP. Fiorina has only one answer to an economic crisis: slash jobs and give more money to the wealthy. It didn’t work under George W. Bush, and it certainly won’t work today.
But that’s Fiorina’s gambit. Her only hope for winning this election is to convince enough Californians that their future prosperity lies in higher unemployment and making the rich richer. We’ll see how well it goes.
Setting aside Fiorina’s lack of understanding of managing an economy out of a depression or a very long and deep recession – whatever the nom du jour – and capriciously ignoring the consequences of all those lost functions, what precisely would change in California’s unemployment and tax rates if the federal employees had zero or negative growth?
What is she proposing besides ginning up regional prejudices against government service and exploiting public fear?
With finance reform, the FDIC has been granted additional powers to investigate banks – such as BofA which hid bad info in order to shore up its books. Failorina would work to undermine this and any other regulatory oversight. Good for multi-national corporations, not so good for Americans.
Yes Fiorina was proud of laying off 28,000 Americans at HP. She used the “savings” to enrich herself with 2 private jets and millions of dollars in bonuses.
AS the HP Board of Directors concluded- Fiorina woke up everyday thinking of how she could promote and help herself at the expense of the HP company and its employees.
That’s the reaon that Fiorina has been unable to find a job in 5 years- the private sector does not want anything to do with Fiorina. Being a failed and fired CEO is not an argument to be elected to the US Senate.
Bob Mulholland