tax hikes to come, all of those things are making people sit on their hands and if we were to have a cut in the corporate rate pared with prudent changes in government spending in the medium and long term the budget is closer to balance maybe people could be optimistic. a one or two-year fix, temporary tax cut won t work, because we re in for a period of slow growth for a while and need to not take the hangover at a time we can t afford to have it. peter, pieces of kevin s diagnosis i agree with. it seems incomplete. if you ve still got this tremendous debt hangover we know exists at all levels and the government has taken out a bunch of debt to help avoid something much worse a couple years ago, you still have household debt that unbelievably it s at high levels. something like 90%, 100% of gdp, the debt levels, as opposed to half that when working our way out of the reagan recession in 1982. don t we need some kind of either mortgage relief, principle relief?