[jiggyboy]

Jack, you're insane. Invert every sentence and post it again.

[Alberta's Child]

Jack Kemp is smoking something if he thinks the stock market collapse is the result of taxation and over-regulation. People paid idiotic prices for shares in companies that had never mde any money and were no indication that they ever would.

If anything, the capital gains tax cuts were actually bad for the stock market in one respect. Because of the enormous spread between the top income tax rates (38%+) and the top capital gains tax rates (20%), people had a financial incentive to ignore income-producing assets in favor of assets that may not produce income but had the potential for growth. Examples of the latter include not only growth stocks but real estate as well -- which is why, incidentally, the run-up in the stock market (espeically in growth stocks) was accompanied a boom in real estate.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Rather than collapsing, markets would be soaring if the establishment were considering serious economic reforms, such as reforming the tax code, slashing corporate income tax rates and capital gains tax rates, and allowing companies to deduct dividends paid to stockholders. We could also get serious about deregulating the remaining two huge overregulated bottlenecks in the American economy -- telecommunications and electric utilities.

The market has been going downhill ever since the inJustice Dept announced its jihad against Microsoft.

Say what you will, but with Kemp or Forbes at Treasury there would be a pro-growth, pro-freedom economic agenda afoot. The cheapest, fastest fix would be to set the capital gains tax rate to 10%. There is never any reason to have it even that high, but it's absurd to have it higher because it yields less rather than more revenue that way.

[Lee_Atwater]

I found it funny that the financial media attributed the 500 point (I think 6%) uptick in the DOW was due to the Rigas arrests. It was more than likely due to a technical rally and the news that the "Corporate Responsibilty" may not to be a huge regulation bill in the end.

The Kemp article says what I have been thinking--that the bankruptcies were not because of fraud. The fraud was meant to distort the market to fend of bankruptcy.

I saw some of "Donahue" last night. I watched mostly out of morbid curiosity. He was in Houston with a bunch of former Enron employees (some Worldcommers there too) in the audience. He had Nader, Ivins, and some journalist on stage with him. It reminded me of a "Socialist Workers Party" rally. Anyway, these Enron employees, I think, have benefited from the fraud because they were allowed to keep their jobs longer. But they were portrayed as "victims of greed". They were victims of market forces (ex. deflation) and bad management decisions (ex. Enron's broadband business).

[Alberta's Child]

. . . today's policymakers poison the economy with high tax rates and crushing regulations.

I must really be missing something here -- tax rates were no different when the stock market slide began in 2000 than they were in 1995 or 1999.

Are you sure you didn't find an article that Kemp had written back in 1979 and post it here today by mistake?

[Catie]

Mr. Kemp ignores the fact that many, many companies played fast and loose with lax accounting standards to hype their profits and consequent value on "the Street."

[habs4ever]

This is a very good piece and worth wider distribution.Freepers could learn a lot by absorbing what Kemp is saying.

[Allrightnow]

That's it! I am going to retain Ms. Cleo's services as my financial advisor and build a bomb shelter. After reading the above article I have arrived at the conclusion that there is no sure way of figuring out what's going on now or where this is all leading. I'm told the cause could be regulation, taxes, bubbles, hedge funds, corporate crime, periodic market fluctuation, fed mismanagement, fed intervention, the Clinton administration, a DNC conspiracy, the media, irrational exuberance, over correction, under correction, or the fact that I am wearing the wrong tie. I have read posts and articles that suggest all these except the tie theory (that's my own).

Throwing my two cents in here: Next time Greenspan wants to say something positive about the economy, let him raise rates 1/2 point first. It will do more for confidence levels then he could ever imagine.

[TruthNtegrity]

I'd like to see Jack Kemp take over Greenspan's job and Larry Kudlow replace O'Neill. Then we'd have a progrowth, pro-supply side effect on the economy, and it would turn around in a heartbeat. Well, almost.