Phil Cannella – Phillip Cannella News
Phil Cannella: “Are we simply pushing off
our current economic issues and saving them for later?”
Andrew Huszar: “I would go back to the story that I painted before – from the 1980s onward, Wall St. becoming a much bigger part of the economy and then when the crash happened in 2008, the U.S. Government, particularly The Fed, stepping in and taking on a lot of the role of Wall Street. So now we keep on doubling down on this policy. When Wall Street wasn’t working the way we wanted after 2008, The Fed stepped in with these bond purchases, and so what I’d say is, we keep trying to paper over a growth issue and a structural problem issue, and the more unorthodox things we do, the more we just ultimately make the situation worse and kick the can down the road.”
Phil Cannella: “So what do you think we need to do to fix our economic issues?”
Andrew Huszar: “Maybe I’m an optimistic person. Maybe it’s that I worked in the Government for as long as I did. I maintain a huge amount of confidence in our Government. I just think our Government needs to get its eye on the ball. As of right now, The Government’s perspective is on, “Oh, let’s try to solve, let’s try to make things a little better for tomorrow”, and I think what we really need to do is have a serious conversation about where do we want to be in 30 years as an economy, and how do we get there? Until we have that conversation you are going to have Wall Street having too much influence in the conversations, you are gonna have short term, ill advised policies by our Government officials, and we just need to be more strategic about this, and we need to stop being as tactical, and that may actually mean things may get a little worse in the short term, but that may be OK if ultimately we are headed in the right direction as a country.”
Phil Cannella: “Would changes in regulation help in fixing these issues?”
Andrew Huszar: “I don’t believe that we can have huge amount of confidence in our regulators to push back on banks. I think ultimately in the U.S., we have five bank regulatory agencies who are responsible for banks, so even if someone in one of them has the right intention, there’s five of them that have to agree on most anything that happens. It’s just not gonna happen realistically, especially with these huge banks the way they are. I believe in free markets and I believe in Government, I believe in both. But what I believe we need is really easy, bright-line rules. We don’t need 10,000 page Dodd-Frank bank reforms. We need 20 page reforms where we say, ‘this is what we had, the Glass Stegall Act’, where we said, ‘this is what an investment bank does, this is what a commercial bank does, we’re not gonna try to get involved in every little thing that you do, we’re just going to say that here are some really bright line rules that you have to follow.’ If we had those simpler regulations, and we weren’t hoping that someone in Government will step forward and regulate every little thing, I think it would create a lot more confidence and would be a lot more effective.”
Hear more from the interview with Phil Cannella and Andrew Huszar on The Crash Proof Retirement Show®. Saturdays at 11am and Sundays at 1pm on Talk Radio 1210AM, WPHT!
