Pete Peterson on Taxes and Spending

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2010/07/pete-peterson-on-taxes-and-spending

Richard Nixon's commerce secretary, Pete Peterson, slipped an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend with a reference to "tax aversion syndrome": "Some have tax aversion syndrome—they have never met a tax increase they didn't do everything in their power to block." The Journal's subheadline captured the spirit of the article: "Higher taxes and reduced entitlement benefits for the well-off are the only solutions."

Mr. Peterson is a champion at sounding the alarm over the federal fiscal imbalance, but you almost never see him utter a peep about state and local budget problems, which are driven in part by the "defined benefit" pension plans for public employees. Mr. Peterson made a huge personal fortune selling public pension managers on investing those pension funds with the Blackstone Group. We covered some of this in the review of Mr. Peterson's book.

by Ira Stoll  |  Jul 26, 2010 at 4:07 pm Related Topics:  Press, State-pension-fund capitalism, Taxes receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list