The Incredible Sinking Economy
The fate of an American icon, General Motors, hangs in the balance. Another government rescue? Maybe. But then again, why GM and why not some other company that's borrowed too much? This isn't Socialism, it's bailout by fiat.
Steven Pearlstein writes an excellent column about the financial problems. "The reason we are in this mess is that Americans, collectively, lived beyond their means for many years," he writes, "consuming more than they produced and investing more than they saved..."
Joel Kurtzman disagrees. Whether you agree or not, it's always useful to hear the contrarian point of view, and Kurtzman provides plenty of contrary opinion in his blog post called Actually, American Consumers Have Been Exemplary.
"The American consumer, still the world's main engine of economic growth," Kurtzman writes, "has home-owner equity worth $10 trillion, before savings and investments. Even in today's economy, $10 trillion is a lot of money."
So while Pearlman sees a world in which we have no choice to but adjust (read downshift) our consumption, former Times correspondent and editor of Harvard Business Review Kurtzman says that once trust is restored, "American consumers are poised to do what they do best - consume."
Who's right?
One other note today, the financial situation must be getting bad because now even the pampered, entitled generation known as Gen Y is starting to get nervous.
Let's hope this doesn't mobilize the helicopter parents. I'd rather bail out GM than deal with that.
By
Scott Berinato
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November 14, 2008; 12:43 PM ET
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Posted by: scottmoore | November 17, 2008 3:36 PM
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With the economy shrinking the military services have to prepare for the impact on military spending. With the spending rate on defense maintaining a certain percentage of the GDP, when the GDP falls so does defense spending. The Army’s Future Combat System (FCS) program is not only the service’s crucial full spectrum technology development program but is also the means to modernize the force to the future objective Brigade Combat Team (BCT) capable of executing the full range of military operations (ARMY magazine ‘Green book’, Weapons and Equipment, October 2008). Answering the question of what the Army should do with FCS must take into consideration the current economic crisis, the politico-military timeline and the Army’s present high operations tempo (OPTEMPO) coupled with its impending future of persistent conflict. Each of these three considerations will perhaps suggest an answer to this question along the lines of either cancelling FCS, continuing FCS unchanged along the bifurcated lines of technology development and force modernization, or modifying FCS to essentially modernize this program of modernization to account for current National conditions. It is my position that the Army must change FCS, in effect, stripping off the research, development, and technology evaluation (RDT&E) from this program of record and return this development to the Joint research and development centers so all services can share in the cost and benefits of these technological advancements. FCS-lite will focus on acquisition of Army systems taking into account joint requirements in accordance with the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) process while meeting the need to field a relevant force in line with future requirements.
Major Scott M. Moore, Student, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College satellite campus, Fort Belvoir, VA
The views expressed in this comment are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.