Marathon Pundit: Report from Thursday's conference call with former Commerce Sec'y Carlos Gutierrez

In my previous post I mentioned that there are no former private sector CEOs in President Obama's cabinet. His predecessor had several, including Carlos Gutierrez, who was George W. Bush's second commerce secretary.

Gutierrez, former head of Kellogs, held a blogger conference call yesterday afternoon that I was fortunate to participate in. It was organized in conjunction with Obama's visit to Chicago:

Here are some highlights:

We now have the fourth highest deficit in the world, as a percent of GDP. With our current debt, we will be paying one trillion dollars of interest expense by 2019. Everything is going in the wrong direction and unfortunately, the administration is solving the wrong problems…

Gutierrez offered an ominous warning for people like myself who live in Illinois:

And while the deficit continues to add up, and then you turn around, you tax people for the inefficient spending. All of that is happening in Illinois, it's sort of like a window in to the rest of the country. Except, unfortunately, Illinois is further advanced…

Gutierrez didn't get into specifics, but the Obama administration and the Democrats are pushing several anti-jobs initiatives which business, particularly small business (the job creators) hate:

Business people are very nervous. They don't trust where this administration is going. They're not really sure, they believe higher taxes are coming, more regulations that actually go against creating jobs…

And he concluded:

But we're going to need the right policies, and what we're getting today is not the way to go. We're solving the wrong problems, we have the wrong strategy; we've got to really, you know, almost do a 180 here, to get the right job-creating strategy. And the question is: can the administration do that?