RE: btw, I'm TOTALLY in favor of holding folks from both parties accountable for their actions...we should NOT let Rubin off the hook but we deserve to know more about Bush and Cheney's business dealings -- why won't they just put all the cards out on the table...??
Scott, if you are so TOTALLY unbiased, why do you keep harping on the current administration. While I agree that my sainted Mother's favorite advice, "Bad news does not improve with age" applies to Bush/Chaney, your Daschle-type attempts to draw criticism away from the previous administration is tiring. A little balance would be a welcome relief, on this thread and in the halls of congress....jj
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Paying the Price for Clintonian Excess
William Rees-Mogg
There are two big questions about the U.S. and world economics. How large is the U.S. dollar deficit going to be in the coming years? And how is it going to be financed? The answers to these questions will affect almost everything else, including the value of the dollar, world interest rates, stock market prices and the growth of world trade.
The U.S. deficit ran out of control in President Clinton's second term. When Bill Clinton came back into office, the U.S. was running a balance of payments deficit of $100 billion or a little more. That could comfortably be financed, and was no serious problem. Between 1998 and 2000, the deficit rose to well over $400 billion, doubling in two successive periods of eighteen months.
This growth in the deficit was financed by a huge inflow of foreign funds, which were invested in the U.S. stock market, driving up U.S. equities to unsustainable prices - and financing not only the deficit itself, but also the dot.com bubble. This was allowed to happen - indeed it was encouraged - by the President himself, by the U.S. Treasury, by the Federal Reserve, and by the leading investment banks. They should have all seen that the dollar deficit was too large, and the bubble was unsustainable. As a result, the United States has been left with an overvalued dollar and an overvalued stock market. The process of returning to stable levels has only just begun....
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The U.S. will continue to pay a price, perhaps a heavy one, for the excesses of the second Clinton term. Bull markets come along quite regularly in financial history, perhaps once a decade. Bubbles do not come so often. They are so foolish and so damaging that it takes at least a generation to forget the horrors they teach...
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