Today’s OpinionJournal “My Economic Policy” is titled lke a sixth-grade essay, and reads like a Kerry speechwriter response to recent discussions on the FOXNews Beltway Boys.
Clearly, Kerry is on the defensive because virtually everyone on Wall Street perceives him as bad news for Wall Street, if not the economy in general.
But the writer who concocted the “My Economic Policy” policy for Mr. Kerry proves too much.
Even if we spot him the drop in investing and exports arguments (we shouldn’t, but most people have no idea how the foreign sector and its accounts figure into U.S. economic health, so Kerry is safe on this), or the deficit argument (we should not, because it misdirects our attention regarding tax policy), the writer’s strongest objections are that these trends are “troublesome and unsustainable.”
Troublesome for Kerry, no doubt, because its likely he doesn’t understand them himself, and cannot afford to have Americans do so. As for “unsustainable,” I suggest we substitute the term “self-limiting.” Market decisions, when they are out of synch with what consumers want, tend to be self-correcting. As a result, we don’t consistently get too many pairs of women’s red size 9 shoes, when we really need black size 5 shoes instead. Without interference from government, imbalances that arise tend to be temporary and self-limiting, That’s what markets do–they find discrepancies between what is and what is wanted, and correct them (at a hefty profit, preferably).
That Camp Kerry neither likes nor trusts markets is clear, regardless of how they view the Bush record. The word “market” appears just twice in the entire op-ed, once in reference to China, and once again in reference to Canada. “Plan,” then, is the watchword here. The Kerry economy is a vision of a “planned” economy.
