“Everything that is hitting the country hit Michigan first,” Jennifer Granholm, former and long-term governer of Michigan from said in an interview, reflecting on eight years in office in which the state’s economic crisis overshadowed all else.
Her response to the crisis, she said, was to cut spending, cut government jobs, cut taxes — the very approach now being promoted now by Republicans... to the extent they offer any ideas.
“We tried all of those prescriptions, too,” said Ms. Granholm, whose final term ended last December. “We did everything that people would want us to do, and yet it didn’t work.”
She added: “Laissez-faire, passivity, tax cuts, hands-off does not work. And, really, that’s the lesson from this laboratory of democracy which is Michigan.”
The only approach that showed glimmers of success, she said, came when the federal government stepped in — to bail out the auto industry, for instance, and to send stimulus funds that encouraged companies like the ones in Michigan now creating lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.
Adapted from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/us/politics/in-granholm-book-cautionary-economic-lessons-from-michigan.html?_r=2
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