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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Paul Vieira
Americans are getting used to Canadian lectures on fiscal responsibility,
but on Tuesday former Prime Minister Paul Martin brought a blunt message to
the heart of Washington: sort out your deficit.
Speaking at an event sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, a
conservative-leaning think tank, Mr. Martin said whoever wins November’s
election must address the U.S.’s burgeoning deficit the very next day
because the economy is at risk of reaching a “tipping point.”
That could come as early as late 2012 as the U.S.’s “fiscal cliff” looms
— the billions of dollars in federal spending cuts and tax increases set to
take effect next year unless Congress doesn’t intervene.
Mr. Martin does have pedigree on the subject. He was Canada’s finance
minister in the mid-1990s when the-then Liberal government made deep
spending cuts that tamed a spiraling deficit and restored market confidence
in a country. By fiscal 1998, Canada had returned to a budget surplus — its
first in nearly three decades.
Mr. Martin became Canadian prime minister in late 2003, losing power to
Conservative Stephen Harper in a 2006 vote.
Now, the retired politician is taking aim at the U.S. deficit. Mr. Martin
argues the U.S. faces a tougher road than Canada, because the global economy
was in better shape in the 1990s when he began cutting.
Yields on U.S. Treasuries may remain near historic lows, said Mr. Martin,
but maybe not for long.
“Given the economic Armageddon of potential threats, like the fiscal cliff,
are there, I would suggest that even for the U.S. there is a tipping point,
” he said.
Meanwhile, attempts by the Federal Reserve to keep the economy moving, with
measures such as bond buying programs, will “run out of gas,” he said.
That’s because the private sector will sit on cash, scared that the elected
government won’t find the balance between sort term stimulus and medium-
term structural change, he said.
Ahead of the November election Mr. Martin also had this advice: be “open”
and honest with voters about the fallout of deficit reduction.
“If you are going to do this but you better tell people the truth from the
beginning” Mr. Martin said. |
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