WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 11, 2011
Emerson Electric CEO David Farr during an earnings call, Aug. 2:
GDP in the U.S. grew in the first half less than 1%. . . . It’s not new news. We have to deal with it. We have a tradition in the company to deal with those things.
Then we have a government situation, their inability to deal with the real gut issues of excess spending and debt. All we hear out of government is, we’re going to raise taxes. We don’t like corporate planes. We’re going to sue Boeing, one of the most strategic companies we have in this country, for building a new plant in South Carolina. We have no desire to really go after corporate tax reform, which would (finally) change this country and encourage people to invest and reinvest and create jobs in this country, but rather demagogue and go after people that actually create those jobs, be it corporations [or] people that are successful. . . .
So, as I look at what [is] coming at us in the second half of this year, I do not see the catalysts that would say that [the] economy will be fundamentally different in the second half than we saw in the first half. . . . Fundamentally, there’s nothing going on in the U.S. right now that would encourage corporations to ignore the excessive regulations coming at us. . . . You look at the new health-care bill. You look at the last week. We decided in Washington to raise the CAFE standards for the second time within three years on the day that we announced less than 1% first-half GDP growth in the U.S. economy. I would say Washington is arranging the chairs on the Titanic.
