<<The questions you should really be asking now is; has Bush's policy initiatives accelerated, or caused in the short term the market to decline? Unfortunately, the answer largely depends on your own political/economic philosophy.
I would say he has helped the economy by allowing people to keep more of their own money, and thereby stimulating businesses to invest in plant production, thus preventing a recession. Others, (who are largely looking at it through partisan political eyes), would probably say the miniscule tax-cut was the sole cause of the deficit increasing, which caused wall-street to abandon their investments and go short. Still others (who are completely partisan blind in my eyes), would say the auditing problems are the sole fault of Bush, and have been the main reasons investors lost confidence in their portfolio's.>>
I think you're constructing a bit of a strawman here.
After all i haven't heard anyone say that the dishonestly labeled tax rebates are the sole cause of our return to deficits. It's the future tax-cuts which are greatly hurting future revenue projections. So projected deficits can absolutely be tied to the tax bill.
After any long expansion, or any long bull market, there's going to be a slowdown or a bear market. That has nothing to do with politics. That's just the way it is.
I give Clinton credit for running surpluses during the last expansion. Reagan ran unprecedented deficits for anytime, but even more incredible that he did it during an expansion. So like it or not Clinton gets some credit for our low interest rates, low inflation, and the fact that we're in relatively good fiscal shape going in to this slowdown.
Bush is doing a lot of things wrong. His budgets are dishonest, that doesn't inspire confidence. His administration is very close to many of the corporate "evildoers." That doesn't inspire confidence. Wall Street doesn't like his economic team, they long for Robert Rubin. Harvey Pitt was lead attorney for Andersen, Enron's CEO got to help pick the head of the FERC which would regulate Enron. These things don't inspire confidence. This lack of confidence in our current team leads the dollar to slide which leads foreign money to leave our soil which only exacerbates the problems.
The economic cycle certainly isn't Bush's fault (nor is it Clinton's or Reagan's), but Wall Street isn't confident that Bush is the right man or that he has the right team to guide us through these waters. I think most would agree with that. It's fairly obvious from the behavior of the market.
One thing's for sure. If things do get worse, if we have an actual recession, Bush will get the blame and his ratings will follow the stock market down. That too is just the way it is.
Steve |
