Letter to the Editor of The Wall Street Journal
Your March 17 editorial "The Buck Stops Where?" about the dangers of a weak dollar was right on point, emphasizing the need for the Fed to restore its credibility. But a weak dollar alone would not be putting us on the verge of a world-wide financial crisis. It would take much more than a weak dollar and the sub-prime mortgage collapse to shake confidence in an economy as strong as the United States is. Unfortunately, other forces are at play that could lead to just such a crisis, including: 1) Continual talk by Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama about huge future tax increases, including the expiration of President Bush's income and capital gains tax cuts; 2) The anti-immigration sentiment that could severely constrain the future labor pool; and 3) The erosion of our leadership in the investment world because of the insidious impact of Sarbanes-Oxley. Investors do look to the future, and taken together, these and other bad policy decisions could indeed undermine even the strongest economy in the world. It's time for political leaders to wake up and understand the damage caused by these anti-growth policies.
Grace-Marie Turner
President
Galen Institute
Alexandria, Va.