Fix It

American business is not just disgusted with American government. Given the climate of economic policy uncertainty, it is re-trenching, by conserving cash and holding back on investment and employment. But, it is also coming together as a single voice to intervene in Washington. 

Last week, this writer commented on a high-level business group, called the Partnership for New York City, members of which have been negotiating quietly with US administration officials and politicians of both parties​ to resolve the imminent  2013 "fiscal cliff".  This morning, another business group, with no doubt CEO membership that overlaps that of the Partnership, showed its public face by ringing the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange. (It was also profiled in today's Wall Street Journal). The group, of some 80 corporate executives, calls itself, quite to the point,  Fix The Debt, a non-partisan (note, not bi-partisan) campaign to provide Washington with a wake-up call. If elected politicians cannot act together, in the face of another US and global recession, then, say the CEO's, they must act to break the logjam, so that appropriate short- and long-term fiscal policy, that supports monetary policy, is formed and implemented.

This CEO mobilization almost over-shadows the Presidential campaign. We can only hope that such intervention has better luck than what often occurs at the personal level.