Cutting out short term data will not fix it, more important is sending out the right long term signals.

Sir, of course that US economic long term competitiveness could be harmed by the companies and markets excessive short term focus but to believe that US economic long term competitiveness could somehow be helped along by cutting quarterly guidance is to be completely out of focus. Do not get me wrong, I am all for scrapping the quarterly guidance, although there are people making a living out of them, but what I mean is that for the US to be able to link more responsibly with the future, much more important is to start out sending the right long term signals. For instance, may I suggest a gasoline tax that prices gas at the pump at US$ 7 a gallon?

Odious debt revisited

Sir, I must confess I was blown away when reading your editorial “Young, gifted, poor”, June 9, in which Junior, with reference “to the old saying that rather than inheriting the planet from our ancestors, each generation borrows it from the children” now wants to see “some collateral on the loan”. I mean, it sort of puts the whole issue of “odious debt” in a totally new and frightful light.

Honestly, the more I see what we are up to, the more certain I become that sooner or later our whole generation of baby-boomers could be kindly invited to take a field trip to an “ättestupa”, meaning those steep cliffs where supposedly elderly Scandinavians ages ago threw themselves from when they became useless to society.

I repeat again my argument for an urgent revision of our governmental system so as to align them with the true shareholder’s interest. If the average life is eighty years a new born should have 80 votes (exercised by his mother or older brother) someone like me would have 23 votes left, and someone over eighty should count his blessings and be glad if he is allowed to keep one as a memento. I do not want to owe the world too my children, I want to assure their rights as stakeholders and make it all a joint venture.