November 17, 2011CEOs Get Warnings About 2012
Just how likely is U.S. business to get whipsawed by troubles in the year ahead?
"If you haven't thrown up yet, you're getting ready to," Erskine Bowles, former co-chair of the national fiscal responsibility commission, told a group of CEOs in Washington this week.
Efforts to cut the deficit are falling short, he said. Congress is in seizure. Calamity beckons.
The government has to spend its money more wisely, "just like you guys do," Mr. Bowles said. "We have this treaty with Taiwan that we'll protect Taiwan if they're invaded by the Chinese. There's only one problem with that: We've got to borrow the money from China to do it!"
His shtick brought the house down, but there was no mistaking the nervous edge to the laughter.
The 87 CEOs had gathered this week at a Wall Street Journal conference to get clarity from Washington figures about the year ahead.
Here's what they heard: more alarms about the deficit crisis in the U.S., the debt crisis in Europe, and distracting elections or leadership changes in the U.S., Europe and Beijing. The words "instability" and "contagion" came up more than once.
And though there was some beneficence from some CEOs toward China, the message for business here, too, wasn't a good one:
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