ASPEN, COLORADO/nyportraits.blogspot.com

ASPEN THINKERS UNEASY: At the 2009 Aspen Institute’s Conferences, an annual gathering of the country's brightest lights, President Obama was the toast of the town. The mood has soured considerably in the last 12 months. Lloyd Grove, one of the president's supporters, has written on the Daily Beast that among the intelligentsia Obama’s support has run dry. “You’d think the well-heeled and enlightened eggheads at the Aspen meetings in this fashionable resort town with heady panel discussions and earnest disquisitions involving all manner of deep thinkers and do-gooders—would be receptive to an intellectually ambitious president with big ideas of his own."

 "In a way, the folks attending this cerebral conclave by the Aspen Institute think tank would be seen as President Obama’s natural base. Apparently not so much.” Mort Zuckerman, owner of the NY Daily News, and Boston Properties and one of the most successful businessmen in the country said: “The hostility (by Obama) to the very kind of business culture that has made this the great country is now doing great damage to this country with a public policy that could ruin everything.”

 “The real problem we have,” Zuckerman said, “are some of the worst economic policies in place today that, in my judgment, go directly against the long-term interests of this country.” Obama’s top economic adviser, Larry Summers, and his departing budget director, can expect heavy weather when they land in Aspen this month to make their case to this civic-minded clique of wealthy skeptics.

 “If you’re asking if the United States is about to become a socialist state, I’d say it’s actually about to become a European state, with the expansiveness of the welfare system and the progressive tax system like what we’ve already experienced in Western Europe,” Harvard business and history professor Niall Ferguson declared, offering a withering critique of Obama’s economic policies (see preceding article).

 “The curse of long-term unemployment is that if you pay people to do nothing, they’ll find themselves doing nothing for very long periods of time,” Ferguson said. “Long-term unemployment is at an all-time high in the United States, and it is a direct consequence of a misconceived public policy, which encourages laziness.”

 Ferguson was joined in his harsh attack by billionaire real estate mogul Zuckerman in the attack on Obama’s trillion-dollar deficit spending program—in the name of economic stimulus to cushion the impact of the 2008 financial meltdown—as fiscally ruinous, potentially turning America into a second-rate power.

 “We are, without question, in a period of decline, particularly in the business world,” Zuckerman said. “The real problem we have…are some of the worst economic policies in place today that, in my judgment, go directly against the long-term interests of this country.”

 Ferguson added: “The critical point is if US policy says you’re going run a trillion-dollar deficit for the rest of time, you’re riding for a fall…Then it really is goodbye.” Ferguson added: “Can I say that, having grown up in a declining empire, I do not recommend it. It’s just not a lot of fun actually—decline.”

Ferguson called for what he called “radical” measures. “I can’t emphasize strongly enough the need for radical fiscal reform to restore the incentives for work and remove the incentives for idleness.” He praised “really radical reform of the sort that, for example, Paul Ryan [the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee] has outlined in his ‘Roadmap’ for radical, root-and-branch reform not only of the tax system but of the entitlement system” and “unleash entrepreneurial innovation.”

 Otherwise, Ferguson warned: “Do you want to be a kind of implicit part of the European Union? I’d advise you against it.” In another session Silicon Valley guru Michael Splinter pilled on: “From an industry standpoint, it’s below what a lot of people in industry have viewed as the solution to the jobs problem. Splinter, president of the Applied Materials solar energy company, complained about Obama’s economic performance.

 ENOUGH IS ENOUGH: “When I talk to venture capitalists, their companies are starting to move their manufacturing operations out of the US. Our corporate tax rate, on a worldwide competitive basis, is just not competitive. Taiwan is lowering their rate to 20 to 15 percent in order to stay competitive with Singapore. These countries have made it their job to attract industry. You don’t get that sense here in the United States.”

 The consensus was similar in an afternoon panel discussion on the decline of the American middle class. Splinter said: “Obama said jobs were going to be his No. 1 priority— all he has done is triple the bureaucracy while crucifying private business.”

 “There’s a huge disconnect between Washington and what’s going on out in the country,” huge Obama supporter Arianna Huffington said. “The president’s economic team kept talking about a cyclical’ problem. Larry Summers said jobs were a lagging economic indicator. All these things are simply wrong. The president put all his trust in the wrong economic team—an economic team that didn’t understand what was happening.”

 It’s clear – the administration is totally lost in space – that’s because NASA has been instructed to forget about Mars and to move to Mecca.