Uncertainty

This pretty much sums it up.

“We’ve been operating for the last year and a half in conditions of perfect uncertainty,” said David J. Ward, president of Madison-based consulting firm NorthStar Economics Inc., adding that he has never before seen such economic doubt in his 45 years as an economist.

“Do you know what the estate tax rate is going to be next year?” he asks. “Do you know what the corporate income tax rate is going to be? Do we know what the personal income tax rate is going to be? Do we know any of a number of other issues? The answer is we don’t. And until we resolve that, the economy’s going nowhere.”

So as the political parties snipe at one another with midterm elections approaching, the nation’s gross domestic product is stumbling along at a 1.6% annual growth rate, according to figures released Friday. And the national unemployment rate is holding well above 9%.

“They’re not going to hire a lot of new people until they have a better sense of the direction the economy is going,” Ward said.

Good business people can find a way to earn money in any market, but they have to know the rules of the game.  We’re in a place now where things have been changing so fast and so arbitrarily that nobody knows what the rules will look like in 3 months, 6 months, 2 years, etc.