Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 18, 1993 TAG: 9302180446
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
NO COMFORT WITH CLINTON'S ECONOMIC `FIXERS'
GARRY Fleming's Feb. 4 commentary, "Cut deficits, ease monetary policy," was interesting on several levels.In the first instance, his prescription for what ails the American economy was persuasive. Ignore for the moment that the rate of economic growth during the past quarter of 1992 was 3.8 percent, which exceeds the long-term historical growth trend for our economy. President Clinton based his campaign on the terrible state of the U.S. economy and, by golly, it has to be fixed. Fleming wants to reduce the federal deficit by further restrictions on government spending and by increased federal taxes on consumption. He would also increase the quantity of money in circulation, thereby reducing interest rates.
It might work but Friends of Bill now in charge of U.S. economic policy are hardly likely to implement those measures. Typical of the new team are D'Andrea Tyson, chairperson of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Robert Reich, secretary of labor. Read their recent books; both want more government spending - not less. Both also want government agencies rather than unpredictable markets to determine the locus of that spending.
Reich wants more spending on infrastructure and government-directed training. Never mind how projects are picked, in which states or industries, or who selects trainees and by what criteria. Tyson favors managed, as opposed to freer, trade with imposition of selected trade barriers and government subsidies paid to targeted industries and firms. Set aside the likely enrichment of lobbyists and increases in consumer prices. With the new team's proclivity for managing or attempting to manage the economy, they are, one may assume, Keynesians all. This may comfort editors of the Roanoke Times & World-News, perhaps even Fleming. I do not experience the same warm, fuzzy feeling.
On a theoretical level, the good professor Fleming may have assumed too much with his assertions of what every Keynesian knows. A January 1993 edition of The Economist suggested that John Maynard Keynes had written so much about so many different ideas, some contradictory, that any person can find Keynesian views with which to agree or disagree.
For President Clinton to adopt Fleming's recommendations, he would have to ignore the advice of his closest advisers and abandon the ideas on which he based his campaign, implementing instead measures first put forth by his opponents. That is too much to ask, even of a leader sometimes referred to by the opprobrium "Slick Willie." GORDON E. SAUL ROANOKE