Treasury Secretary Sees 'Golden Age'

The Associated Press
Sunday, June 24, 2001; 1:49 p.m. EDT

WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said Sunday that the
country is"on the edge of a golden age of prosperity," describing the current
economic slowdown as an"adjustment period."

"I think we're not doing badly for the kind of correction that we're in right
now," O'Neill said on ABC's"This Week."

"It's easy to find gloom and doom, but consumers are hanging in there, their
spending rates are still quite good," O'Neill said."The contraction occurred
... in the investment sector, where we had an overexpansion."

The Treasury chief was less optimistic about the future of Social Security.
"We're headed toward a situation where we're going to have a lot more
people retired and a lot fewer workers providing payroll taxes, that we've
got to do something different," he said.

The answer, he said, is the Bush plan to let workers invest some of their
Social Security contributions into personal savings accounts.

"It's a big idea," O'Neill said."It's time for us to make every American into
a wealth accumulator, not a creator of an entitlement benefit."

Quelle: Washington Post

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