Nehemia Shtrasler

Next year, pay in the public sector will rise by 5.5 percent, more than the 2.3 percent in the private sector. This is the exact opposite of what is needed. Instead of encouraging the thin man, we are actually spurring on the fat one.

After the agreement between the treasury and the Histadrut, the bottom line is that the fat man will be fatter and the thin man will be thinner.

High-tech companies are threatening to leave Israel if the financial support they receive from the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS) is cut.

Journalists waited for the opportunity with bated breath. They desperately wanted to prove they aren't "bleeding heart liberals" but "socially aware and good Jews." So the moment the Shinui ministers were fired, the press launched a smear campaign against the terrible secular party.

Charges by NII Director General Yigal Ben Shalom that government cuts in stipends explain the rise do not jive with historical data. Rather, increasing stipends perpetuates poverty, passing it on from generation to generation.

A strong shekel is bad news for exporters. High-tech manufacturers highly dependent on American markets are sure to suffer and since Israel's growth is based on this sector, the dollar's position could stunt growth.

The most efficient barriers to competing imports are the invisible ones. Not tariffs, but licenses, quotas, bureaucracy, and the Standards Institute.

A family of 17 children will forever be dependent on the state. It will rely on National Insurance handouts - for gifts, for grants, for donations - which will never be enough.

If Netanyahu joins the lines of the "rebels," making elections unavoidable next year, no one will be thinking about struggles against commissions and bankers, and the Bachar report will sink deep into the bottom of the drawer.

Lawmakers from both the government coalition and the opposition demanded a particularly high price in return for their support of the budget - payment that would have broken through all the frameworks.

The treasury proposes raising the price of water because water from desalination plants costs the government NIS 3 per cubic meter.

It is not easy to solve the puzzle called Benjamin Netanyahu. For a year and a half, he labored to change the image that (justly) clung to him during his days as prime minister.

The attorney general has decided to wage a frontal attack on the corruption within our own camp, the slip-sliding crumbling of our political lives, the sickness that has turned cabinet ministers and MKs into a group controlled by the likes of Uzi Cohen.

Politics creates strange bedfellows - in this case, Benjamin Netanyahu, Zevulun Orlev, Haim Oron and Ariel Sharon.

The business press is currently full of scathing criticism, in endless editorials, of the finance minister going back on his promises to bring parity to taxes on foreign and local stocks by 2005.

It's now official - the economy will grow 4 percent this year, following a three-year recession, and Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can say: I told you so. I promised growth and I kept my promise.

There is a deep-founded fear that this year will end with low inflation. Many economic journalists are up in arms over the coming catastrophe, and are recommending an attack against this evil phenomenon.

Benjamin Netanyahu's world rests on three pillars: cutting the budget, lowering taxes and implementing reforms. These are the ingredients needed to create rapid economic growth and to get the business sector to create more and more jobs.