Fox News’ Varney: 'New Era of Wealth Redistribution'

SAN ANTONIO, TX -- We are living through absolutely tumultuous times and are on the cusp of a new era of wealth redistribution, said Stuart Varney, a Fox News business reporter who delivered the keynote speech at the American Society of Safety Engineers’ Safety 2009 Professional Development Conference and Exposition held last month in San Antonio, TX.

“I live in New Jersey, work in New York and travel often to California, three states that are in dire financial straits, so it’s nice to be invited to speak to you in the great and solvent state of Texas,” he told the more than 3,000 safety professionals who attended Monday morning’s general session.

In the past generation, America has been the best performing economy of all the best industrial economies, he said.

“We are the outstanding performers, and you’ve not heard that before. For 25 years, unemployment was consistently below six percent, while Western Europe’s was 50 percent above that. You have to have growth, and the U.S. had it like no other. Over the last 100 quarters, in only five of those quarters was the economy flat or in decline. The growth rate was unmatched at three percent, and 34 million jobs were created in 25 years. We were the envy of the developed world.”

After delivering a timeline of events that have devastated the financial industry over the last nine months, Varney said that Washington has replaced New York City as the financial capital of the world.

And while we continue to “bump along the bottom,” the panic and cliff diving are over, he said. “We have a long, slow recovery from here.”

The new era of wealth redistribution, he forecasts, will punish success with trade policies geared to more restriction, not free trade.

“Energy companies, drug companies and others will be more tightly regulated. There’s been a fundamental shift in America’s financial culture,” which he blamed partly on the media, ”which has had a lot to do with shifting understanding and acceptance of American capitalism, due to stories about the “rogue rich” like Dennis Kozlowski, who “looted” $300 million from his company and shareholders to pay for $6,000 shower curtains and million dollar birthday parties.

“We are receding to market social capitalism,” he said.

He said the major challenge going forward is population shift, because fertility rates have fallen rapidly throughout the developed world due to mass middle classes, the education of women and the availability of birth control.