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I'm Richard Fisher, I'm president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas,
one of the 12 federal reserve banks in the United States
that operate the payment system of our country.
Well, one of our advantages in Texas is we have a state legislature under both Democrats
and Republicans - this isn't a partisan matter -
that has been pro-business,
that have been minimal in their regulatory influence on our society.
Now, the banking system, which is
my and my colleagues' responsibility,
as a monetary authority
is flush with liquidity.
We have trillions of dollars sitting fallow
in the banks in the United States
and, of course, in Texas banks as well.
Outside the banking system, we have several trillion dollars
the are sitting on businesses' balance sheets.
They're uncertain about the future,
they're not going to use it to hire and expand until they get better clarity.
One of the reasons Texas has outperformed is because our government
sends us the right signals:
pro-business mentality and limited interference.
The federal government is a huge influence on Texans as well as everybody else
and nobody knows really, presently, what taxes are going to be
in the next Congress or in the lame duck period.
Going forward, they don't know what their tax rate is going to be,
they don't know how the federal government is going to spend money,
how to be distributed and impact their customer base or themselves.
So if you're a businesswoman trying to make a decision,
let's say you are running a small business of 12 or 30 employees, or 100 employees,
or a big business. You have no idea what your costs are going to be.
And until you get that clarity, you are unlikely to expand.
Why would you hire somebody unless you were confident
that you knew what it was going to cost you?
And, by the way, unless you were confident that the rest of the world was going to
have demand for your product or service that you're creating.
And right now, the rest of world doesn't look very good.
We're the shining star within the United States, which is the shining star in the
rest of the world.