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Monday, September 20, 2010

The Three E’s – Engineering, Economics, and Entrepreneurship

Obama and the Democrats insist that the Republicans threaten to dismantle their precious socialist plans but have no plans of their own. That’s not true; the Media has simply been ignoring the Republican plans.

Roland Straten, running for Congress in New Jersey’s 8th District, has a degree in engineering, economics, and was an entrepreneur – in a word, he’s really smart. He has plenty of good ideas. He sent this memo out to his supporters. We need to disseminate these ideas out to the general public, especially the besieged 8th district in New Jersey.

Three Specific Actions that Congress can take to End the Recession

Straten Forecasts 8% unemployment rate in two months

The Recession and the Party of NO

Republicans are continuously attacked as being the party of NO. The truth, however, is quite the opposite. The solutions offered by Republican candidates are largely ignored by the media.

Since Bill Pascrell does not understand Economics 101, which covers the concept of free markets and the supply/demand curve, I am forced to give him a failing grade and move on to Business 101.

The first lesson in Business 101 is that the massive stimulus package that was to give us an 8% unemployment rate during the summer of recovery did nothing of the sort. Instead, it gave us a 9.6% unemployment rate and the largest deficit in the history of our country.

The second lesson is that business does not like uncertainty. Corporate leaders will do anything do avoid uncertainty.

The third lesson is that business hates surprises, especially from Washington. Business wants to know the bad stuff up front so they can plan for it. I used to tell my employees to give me the bad news right away so that I could take the needed action to minimize the effect on the company.

Three major sources of uncertainties and surprises are:

1. Taxes

2. Health Care Costs

3. Cost of Capital (Interest rates and loan availability)

For business to expand, invest, and hire, it needs an end to the uncertainty about what Washington will do next year. Businesses are just completing their budgets for 2011. How can they plan effectively if they do not know what their tax rate will be, if they do not know what their health care costs will be, and if they do not know if they can get a loan or what that loan will cost should they need one?

Right now congress is fiddling while Rome is about to be burned with a massive tax increase. No one knows for sure what will happen. We hear that congress will do something, but we have no idea what that something is. Everything is on hold until we get some insight on what Congress will do next year. Unless Congress, acts we will have a massive tax increase on Jan 1, 1011. Unless Congress acts, we could have a massive increase in health care costs next year. And finally, loan costs could skyrocket or loans could become totally unavailable.

As a result business is sitting tight not spending, not buying, not hiring -- doing nothing until they find out the bad news so they can plan.

Our federal government must take three simple actions and business will start hiring and investing ending the recession. I forecast that if we take these three simple actions, the unemployment will rate will be 8% or lower 2 months after they are signed into law.

The three actions are:

1) Make the current tax code permanent. (extend the current tax code permanently)

2) Repeal the current health care bill known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Address the key health reforms that need to be made: Allow purchase across State lines -- Tort Reform -- Delink healthcare policies from Employers -- Health Policies should be transportable -- Reduce Mandated benefits -- Keep Medical Decisions in hands of Doctors in Patients.

3) Allow the federal discount rate to increase to 2% (the federal discount rate is now .75%) -- this allows banks to borrow at almost nothing and lend out from 4.75% to 18% -- individuals get minimal return for their investments and need to get some return on their investment)

If Washington does these three simple things, I forecast that within two months unemployment will drop to 8% or lower.


Roland Straten
Box 43254, Montclair, NJ 07043
http://www.rolandstraten.com/
RStraten@RolandStraten.com
973.333.5415
Paid for by StratenforCongress (there was no fee for appearing on this blog)

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