Steven Rattner
Steven Rattner
Steven Lawrence Rattneris an American financier who served as lead adviser to the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry in 2009 for the Obama administration. He was a managing principal of the Quadrangle Group, a private equity investment firm that specialized in the media and communications industries. Prior to co-founding Quadrangle, he was an investment banker at Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, and Lazard Freres & Co., where he rose to deputy chairman and deputy chief executive officer. Rattner began...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth5 July 1952
CountryUnited States of America
Eye-popping tales of growing income inequality are hardly new. By now, nearly every American must be painfully aware of the widening pay gap between top executives and shop floor laborers; between 'Master of the Universe' financiers and pretty much everyone else.
Finally, let's keep well in mind the most important lesson of the auto rescue: While government should stay away from the private sector as much as possible, markets do occasionally fail, and when they do government can play a constructive role, as it did in the case of the auto rescue.
To fix Social Security, we should first stop using the Consumer Price Index to adjust benefits for inflation. Using the C.P.I. overstates the impact of inflation and has also led to larger increases in benefits for Social Security recipients than the income gains of typical American workers.
To be sure, India has achieved enviable success in business services, like the glistening call centers in Bangalore and elsewhere. But in the global jousting for manufacturing jobs, India does not get its share.
The weak economy, widening income inequality, gridlock in Congress and a presidential election: Those were perhaps the dominant economic and political themes of 2012.
Slapping a catchy acronym like the JOBS Act on a piece of legislation makes it more difficult for politicians to oppose it - and indeed that's what happened with the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act.
Picking winners among the many young companies seeking money is a tough business, even for the most sophisticated investors. Indeed, most professionally run venture funds lose money. For individuals, it's pure folly. Buy a lottery ticket instead. Your chance of winning is likely to be higher.
Neither the George W. Bush nor the Obama administrations volunteered to bail out G.M., Chrysler and other parts of the auto sector. Both subscribed firmly to the longstanding American principle that government should resolutely avoid these kinds of interventions, particularly in the industrial sector.
Increased revenues, meaning higher taxes, will be a central element of any successful long-term budget plan, and President Obama is right to insist that the wealthy - the slice of America that has come through the recession in by far the best financial health - should provide those funds.
The highest-income Americans don't need tax-free health insurance, mortgage interest deductions or deferred taxation on retirement funds.
Thanks to decades of accumulated federal budget deficits and, more significantly, imprudent Medicare and Social Security policies, we've stolen almost $60 trillion from our children.