KT,
I disagree with you totally and then some more.
1. There was nothing Bush could do about Alan Greenspan initially being forced to lower interest rates to stave off the deepening recession that resulted from Clinton's telecom and tech bubble bursting.
2. There was nothing Bush could do about Greenspan being a "mental midget bail out king" and keeping real rates negative for so long he eventually set off all the speculation in real estate and elsewhere.
Now that the real estate bubble has burst though, there should be 2 objectives.
1. Removing the current excesses, punishing the irresponsible lenders and pushers of bad debt and securities, punishing their shareholders, and punishing other related dirt bags without causing a depression.
2. Making sure this kind of boom and bust doesn't happen on such a regular basis because of poor monetary policy.
#1 is in progress and couldn't be going any better. So far financial institutions have already written off about 100 billion dollars. "F" them where they "F'n" breath! I love it! Personally I'd prefer they were recapitalized by US citizens like Buffett, the few stronger US banks and financial institutions, stock issuance to citizens etc.... But, if those funds are not available domestically because people like Buffett and the strong financial institutions don't see enough value yet, so be it. The 100B has been written off and the companies are still functioning. If more needs to written off, there's more dilution, a few BKs etc... so be it. This is the perfect scenario for teaching all these scumbags a lesson. The shareholders are getting killed and the upper managements are getting the boot. I love it to death! Irresponsible and reckless behavior is being punished instead of being rewarded, but the free market is stepping in with new capital to keep the institutions functioning.
As to #2......
As far as today's rate cut goes, it's impossible to know whether it was the correct move or not. That's been the fundamental issue and problem all along. No one on planet earth could possibly know what level interests rates should be set at because individuals have incomplete understanding and information etc.... That's why the current monetary system is so F'd up. It's run by a bunch of idiots that think they know what they are doing. If rates were set by market forces alone based on the available level of savings and the demand for that savings, extreme excesses of almost any type would be almost impossible and we wouldn't find ourselves in these horrible positions every few years.
I have no idea whether today's rate cut was right or wrong and neither does Bernanke, Greenspan, you, or anyone else. Until we fix the monetary system, we are screwed and destined to have rolling bubbles around the globe forever. That's not any current or recent president's fault....
Bailouts orchestrated to avoid any sort of minor economic blip instead of allowing the system to correct and get healthy again
Bailouts designed to make sure scum on Wall St. doesn't lose a dime or a high level job no matter how incompetent and irresponsible they behaved
Bailouts designed to practically make moral hazard a constitutional requirement
Bailouts designed to allow the scum to rape and pillage the middle class some more......
Those are the kinds of things an administration can be blamed for. No one in the history of America was better at using government and its monetary institutions to accomplish that than Clinton, Rubin, and Greenspan and anyone that understands our system and the last 15 years or so knows that.
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