[Editorial] What Effects Do Presidential Economic Talks Produce?

President Roh held a talk for the recovery of economic revival with CEOs of 15 corporations and presidents of financial organizations Monday. It is first comforting to hear that the large corporations have said that they would turn themselves up for investment, which has been low so far, more actively at the talks. The level of corporate investment so far this year has halted at 37 percent compared to their initial plans, so one can realize how investment has been shrinking. Therefore, if the corporations lead the investment drive from now, it would help the job market and economy revive.

However, the corporations’ determination alone can be faced with obstacles in its operational process if the investment environment does not improve. In that respect, the lack of announcement of any bold governmental policy change for creating the environment in which corporations can implement their business easily and make investments will likely become an obstacle in realizing the corporations’ motivation.

In particular, it was regretful that President Roh’s understanding of the economy still revealed quite a gap away from the reality felt by many of our economy’s subjects. President Roh questioned whether or not the economic reality projected by the media or the economic organizations was accurate. Of course, one specific media company or an organization cannot analyze economic reality perfectly, but we still see the economic difficulty that is suffered by throughout the nation’s people is in quite a serious situation. President Roh should feel with his own skin the reality that the middle class is disintegrating rapidly and that the situation where small and large corporations are losing the will to do their business.

The government’s responsibility now is to create an atmosphere where the members of the economy feel like working again and to relieve the realistic difficulties of each member with specific policies. It is not their responsibility to drive away the demands from the market toward the policies and the discontent toward the government’s attitude in regard to economic problems considering that they are groundless.