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I'm not kidding. I asked the question becuase I wanted the people who constantly blame "W" for the poor economy to list specific acts by him that caused it. So what did he do?
How Did GW Bush Cause Our Current Economic Problems?
There's plenty of blame to spread around, going all the way back to Reagan.
And the main culprit is deregulation, which allowed Wall St to legally make very risky and unsound moves with other people's money, while covering their own bets and paying themselves incredible bonuses, which they kept after being bailed out by hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.
For a large sector of the public, much of the risky losing "investments" that these financial geniuses gutted were pension funds.
I'm probably not alone in thinking that there are about a thousand Wall St fatcats who should be serving long prison sentences.
There's plenty of blame to spread around, going all the way back to Reagan.
And the main culprit is deregulation, which allowed Wall St to legally make very risky and unsound moves with other people's money, while covering their own bets and paying themselves incredible bonuses, which they kept after being bailed out by hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.
For a large sector of the public, much of the risky losing "investments" that these financial geniuses gutted were pension funds.
I'm probably not alone in thinking that there are about a thousand Wall St fatcats who should be serving long prison sentences.
I agree with the first phrase (plenty of blame).
Beyond that, no one knows how the economy gets where it does. All you get are stories that are neither true or predictive in any way.
Bush Jr. cleaned up both Reagan and his daddies mess so him, his family, and his newly appointed VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA/HALLIBURTON DICK CHENEY would gain. I am not saying we shouldn't have gone, but we didn't have the planning nor the backing to make it our quest. This war is costing us around $750 billion. The Insider - Iraq's WMD - Made in America
Bush Jr and his family friend Kenneth Enron Lay along with the head of the White House Energy Task Force Mr. Dick Cheney were all in bed with each other.
And biggest of all Bush killed our confidence in politics.
I'm not going to say the Dems didn't help drive this country into the ground, but Bush certainly gave the car to Obama with no gas and a nearly maxed out credit card!
"How Did GW Bush Cause Our Current Economic Problems? (Clinton, speech, bias)"
OK, let's look at the W Bush economy.
"Publication: Business Wire
Date: Friday, January 4 2008
More Than 8.3 Million Jobs Created Since August 2003 In Longest Continuous Run Of Job Growth On Record
WASHINGTON -- Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released new jobs figures - 18,000 jobs created in December. Since August 2003, more than 8.3 million jobs have been created, with more than 1.3 million jobs created throughout 2007. Our economy has now added jobs for 52 straight months - the longest period of uninterrupted job growth on record. The unemployment rate remains low at 5 percent. The U.S. economy benefits from a solid foundation, but we cannot take economic growth for granted and economic indicators have become increasingly mixed. President Bush will continue working with Congress to address the challenges our economy faces and help facilitate long-term economic growth, job growth, and better standards of living for all Americans.
* Real GDP grew at a strong 4.9 percent annual rate in the third quarter of 2007. The economy has now experienced six years of uninterrupted growth, averaging 2.8 percent a year since 2001.
* Real after-tax per capita personal income has risen by 11.7 percent - an average of more than $3,550 per person - since President Bush took office.
* Over the course of this Administration, productivity growth has averaged 2.6 percent per year. This growth is well above average productivity growth in the 1990s, 1980s, and 1970s.
By 2003, Mr. Bush grasped this lesson. In that year, he cut the dividend and capital gains rates to 15 percent each, and the economy responded. In two years, stocks rose 20 percent. In three years, $15 trillion of new wealth was created. The U.S. economy added 8 million new jobs from mid-2003 to early 2007, and the median household increased its wealth by $20,000 in real terms.
But the real jolt for tax-cutting opponents was that the 03 Bush tax cuts also generated a massive increase in federal tax receipts. From 2004 to 2007, federal tax revenues increased by $785 billion, the largest four-year increase in American history. According to the Treasury Department, individual and corporate income tax receipts were up 40 percent in the three years following the Bush tax cuts. And (bonus) the rich paid an even higher percentage of the total tax burden than they had at any time in at least the previous 40 years. This was news to theNew York Times, whose astonished editorial board could only describe the gains as a “surprise windfall.”
In addition, he managed to steadily reduce our increase in public debt and our deficit near the end of his final term. It only started to rise again in 2008"
You can have GOP controlled House, GOP controlled Senate and GOP controlled White House, but if anything goes wrong, they will always blame someone else.
I hope the next GOP president, which I think will happen in 2016, will have more backbone and take some responsibility for mistakes he/she makes.
You can have DNC controlled House, DNC controlled Senate and DNC controlled White House, but if anything goes wrong, they will always blame someone else. It's almost like ALL politicians take credit where none is due and point fingers when blame is due.
The Iraq War made sense at the time. That's why so many Democrats who later claimed to have been hypnotized by Bush into authorizing the war actually did so. For them it was a gamble either way. No one knew with 100% certainty what Hussein really had left, but the cost of being wrong was simply unacceptable in 2002. Those Democrats were correct in erring in the side of US civilian safety. Had chemical agents been used on US soil as they were in Iran and Iraq, the impact of the attack(s) would have made 9/11 a footnote in history.
The Monday morning quarterbacking by the left doesn't square with history or reality. According to our Constitution, no president can authorize a war, so this being Bush's war is erroneous from the start. Furthermore, the day when the US is faced with nuclear blackmail or an outright nuclear attack by an Islamic terrorist organization is viewed by the US intelligence community as an inevitability. I applaud president Bush for at least delaying that day. No American likes war and presidents in office during extended conflicts pay the price at the polls. Just ask Truman, Johnson and Nixon. Bush took his lumps too, but to say Democrats were anything but supportive is election year BS.
The Iraq War made sense at the time.
Of course it did. We made our decisions off the lies were were told.
How Did GW Bush Cause Our Current Economic Problems?
He didn't accomplish the Great Recession single-handedly.
He had plenty of help from his GOP congress. Tax cuts, trickle-down, and deregulation did the trick. To be entirely fair, it was Clinton, in one of his last acts, who signed the Gramm, Leach, Bliley Act, that took the first BIG step towards unravelling the economy in 2000. He should have vetoed it. Gramm, Leach and Bliley were all three Pubs and their "financial modernization" law, passed by the GOP congress, led to the derivatives and other exotic runaway high risk investing schemes that sunk the economy. We'd all be so much better off today if Clinton had vetoed that thing.
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How Did GW Bush Cause Our Current Economic Problems?
How Did GW Bush Cause Our Current Economic Problems?
