Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from a column by Cheryl Hall that appeared in the January 24, 2010, edition of The Dallas Morning News. Michael Cox, director of the O'Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom in SMU's Cox School of Business, provided expertise for this story.
January 25, 2010
The mood has dramatically improved in the 13 months since The News' first gathering of top business leaders.
Cautious optimism has replaced palpable fear. It was scary to hear just how uncertain these leaders were at the end of 2008.
Now, at the outset of 2010, the same people – with the addition of two – said the worst is past.
Yet nobody was singing "Happy Days Are Here Again."
In fact, there was an underlying message that the "happy days" of the past may never return. And that's not an altogether bad thing since euphoria can often result in a rush for fool's gold.
And this year's attendees marched out enough elephants in the room to fill a circus tent: inflation, residential foreclosures, rising energy costs and failure to educate a competitive workforce. . .
Michael Cox, director of the O'Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University, said, "Taxes are going to come to pay for this huge debt we've run up – not just during the current administration. This goes back to what we spent under the Bush administration."
Read the full story.
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