Joe Nocera, "What Is Business Waiting For?": Answer . . . Leadership

In his latest New York Times op-ed, "What Is Business Waiting For?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/opinion/nocera-what-is-business-waiting-for.html?hp), Joe Nocera savages Obama's job creation ideas and calls upon American corporations, flush with cash, to ignore short-term profits in order to put people back to work:

"As for the government, President Obama’s idea of job creation is extending unemployment insurance, on the one hand, and painting grandiose pictures of far-off 'green jobs,' on the other. He is bereft of ideas for creating jobs in the here and now. Meanwhile, the Republicans insist — despite mounds of evidence to the contrary — that more tax cuts would create jobs. By now, most Americans have lost hope that our current government will come up with a viable jobs program. It won’t.

I am coming more and more to think that with the government essentially paralyzed for the foreseeable future, the only way we’re going to get jobs is by turning to actual job creators: business itself. With all their cash, companies shouldn’t be waiting for Congress to give them tax incentives to hire people. They should be trying to jump-start the economy — and fend off another recession — by making investments, and hiring workers, that will lead to renewed prosperity."

Corporations will only accept the idea of foregoing short-term profits if they are made to believe that hiring will lead to long-term growth. In order to ready themselves for long-term growth, business leaders need to believe that Washington has a plan - any plan, short-term or long-term - to reignite the economy. Regrettably, Obama, already busy campaigning for reelection, is, as acknowledged by Nocera, bereft of ideas and busy blaming the tsunami in Japan for America's economic woes (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOqPIOMJzWY).

What to do? "Well, now if I were president of this land" (Steppenwolf, "The Pusher"), I would declare war on unemployment. I would convene a gathering of the CEOs of America's 100 largest corporations and disseminate my program for spurring economic growth over the next 12 months, including tax incentives for job creation and a renewed drive to free the US from dependence upon foreign oil. And I would call America's CEOs to the podium, one at a time, asking them to share their ideas, to commit to cooperation, and to pledge immediate expansion of their corporate work forces.

But it all begins with a restoration of confidence, deriving, in turn, from "leadership we can believe in" - something that is sorely lacking in Washington.