"It's certainly not morning in America."
First you mess up the world's financial system. Then you blow the rescue of it. Now let's show you how to do it properly.
Peter Gumbel | Europe to U.S.: You messed up the rescue, too
Like every other high-income country, the U.S. will finally need a national value-added tax or sales tax of some sort, perhaps starting at a 5% rate (to collect initially around 3% to 5% of GDP). The VAT has proved to be a smart tax, by focusing taxation on consumption rather than on saving and investment. Admittedly, we are nowhere near a public consensus on such issues. Nobody has even bruited such a possibility. Both candidates are promising tax cuts: Obama moderately for the middle class, and McCain recklessly for the rich and for corporations as well.
Yet reality will begin to dawn. Reaganomics is over - even the moderate, triangulating version of the Clinton years. It's time to embrace government again as part of the solution rather than as the source of the problem. And it's time to start paying for government again. Our future, and surely our children's, will depend on it.
Jeffrey Sachs | How to rebuild America
Didn't ever think I'd end up ferreting through Fortune for a good read. My, things really have changed ...
U.S. stocks plunged the most since the crash of 1987, hammered by the biggest drop in retail sales in three years and growing doubt that plans to bail out banks will keep the nation out of a recession. ... The Standard & Poor's 500 Index plunged 90.31 points, or 9.1 percent, to 907.7. The Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated 733.48, or 7.9 percent, to 8,577.51, its second biggest point drop ever. The Nasdaq Composite Index lost 150.68, or 8.5 percent, to 1,628.33. ... The retreat over the past two days erased almost all of the gains in the S&P 500 and Dow on Oct. 13, when the market rallied the most since the 1930s on speculation the government's plan to shore up banks will ease the credit crisis.
Bloomberg | U.S. Stocks Plunge Most Since Crash of `87 on Recession Concern
