CEOs Need to Make U.S. Debt Election Issue, Cote Writes in FT

Chief executive officers should do five things “to put pressure on Washington” concerning the ballooning national debt, David Cote, chief executive officer of Honeywell International Inc. (HON) wrote in the Financial Times.

Those five things, Cote said, are: bring up the issue on every talk with a politician; mention it in every speech; educate employees on the matter and urge them to raise it with their Congressional representatives; push for a presidential candidates’ debate on debt and support the Campaign to Fix the Debt.

If the debt is not properly dealt with, it will become “an unconscionable $21 trillion (about 85 percent of GDP) in 10 years,” Cote wrote. “It will doom us to five years of 1 percent real GDP growth and 8 percent unemployment,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: John Simpson in Toronto at jsimpson12@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Greg Chang at gchang1@bloomberg.net