Big Media Distorts Bush Economic Record

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Mark of OH -
Nobody argues that Hoover was a great president or that his policies were good - raising taxes and trade barriers in 1929 was hugely damaging. That doesn't absolve FDR from implementing policies that sounded good but were damaging to economic recovery.
Re: Clinton - you are right, Clinton deserves credit for lowering cap gains taxes and lower trade barriers. That said, just because the bubble burst once he had left office does not wash his hands clean of responsibility either. The tech bubble is not some revisionist creation - it was real, it happened, it popped. Same goes for the artificially low inflation rates the Fed had for too long.
Sarcasm isn't going to convince anyone when you haven't any substance
http://ultimaratioliberarum.blogspot.com/

Adam Smith of NY 5:51PM January 14, 2009

This is a very nice and evenhanded assessment of Bush's economic record. It has gotten so trendy or ingrained to blame anything and everything on the man. Am I a big fan? No. That said, the man gets unfairly killed in the media, way more than his due.
http://ultimaratioliberarum.blogspot.com/

of NY 5:45PM January 14, 2009

What we know as reality is actually the myth that Bush was right all along and things are realy wonderful and if we stay in Iraq for 100 years we will win something or other.
Economy? John McCain wouldn't lie to us would he? No, not really. He just didn't hava a clue.
But cheer up. Everything will be alright if all the people that no longer have jobs or homes just go out and spend all that money they don't have.
Boy, this twilight zone stuff is really great!

Hillbillybill of TN 3:50PM January 14, 2009

I love to cool aid comment. I have to say the DummyU talk down the economy so much in the 2000 election that I guess he fooled all the cool aid drinkers into thinking we had a recession before he took office.
As I remember it there were jobs to be had, oil was at a high (for then) but reasonable rate, people were not losing their homes, and the economy was doing pretty well after 8 years of Clinton. All of this revisionist garbage that the Clinton economy was really the Bush 41 or better yet the Reagan economy is bull crap. I lived through all of them and I can say that times were tough durning Reagan and Bush 41. Times have become Hooveresq under Bush 43.
Oh thats right I forgot Hoover was really a great president and FDR was terrible; he actually made the depression go on longer than it would have if the government would have continued Hoovers policies. Where is the Cool Aid Man from the old school commercials to gives a really sarcastic OH YEA to these right of center idiots.

Mark of OH 9:33AM January 14, 2009

The Kool-Aid you drink must be refreshing

Ha Ha of TN 8:01AM January 14, 2009

Ha Ha Ha

concerned reader of Pethmeth of 7:45AM January 14, 2009

Overall that's a fair and relatively accurate assessment. Regarding Bush you might want to take another and deeper turn of the crank. Regarding Greenspan: 1) we were headed into a war, 2) employment didn't begin recovering to '03 and was structurally weak after the Tech bust and 3) long-term rates, which funded the Housing and Credit bubbles, responded abnormally because of a worldwide savings glut. Which in turn was brought about by the abi-normal nature of this cycle (investment-driven instead of post-WW2 normal consumer-led). Dig into those and tell us what strategic options would have occurred to you at the time.
The one you really missed however was the regulatory conundrum where everybody mis-understood the dependence of stable and secure markets on the institutional framework. Some of that was ideology but much of it was lack of intellectual grasp on the part of the theoreticians AND policy strategists.
That's three major lines of inquiry worthy of further investigative reporting IMHO because the underlying realities are going to structure our go-forward circumstances for the next decade...as the did for the past two. Like to make a small wager ?

dblwyo of CT 6:52AM January 14, 2009