At Investor’s Business Daily, Robert Higgs takes a gloomy look at the current state of net investment in the U.S., and concludes:

Unless private investment recovers more rapidly, the economy’s recovery is sure to remain slow, too slow to significantly lower unemployment.

Firms are reluctant to undertake risky long-term investments because they continue to view the future with major misgivings, owing to the unsettled condition of future government actions with regard to health care, financial regulations, energy regulations, taxation and other matters that have serious business implications.

He left out telecom, but it is hard to deny that that too is fraught with investment-killing uncertainty.

The tech world is also awaking to the reality that no man, or industry, is an island, and that madness over CO2 is not going to help tech in the long term. See Politico‘s story this morning:

Chip Makers Fearful of New-Era Regs

Mike Zapler has this morning’s top story: “Computer chip manufacturers are taking aim at new EPA greenhouse gas rules they say could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in extra costs and lengthy bureaucratic delays to their operations. … For the first time, under the new rules, the semiconductor industry would be lumped into the same category of major greenhouse gas emitters as power plants and autos. That would

[Cross-posted at Digital Society]