Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (303780)	9/20/2006 7:21:56 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1573201

If I had a clearly higher ranked choice that immediately came to mind I would have said it was wrong, not questionable. One complicating factor is that the president doesn't have 100% control over the budget (and in fact with entitlements that control is even less than it used to be, but since Bush expanded entitlements that isn't a strong defense for him) I would consider deficits as a percentage of GDP, not in nominal dollars. By that definition Bush is merely bad, not totally awful. Some of the presidents I can think of are even worse, they would mostly have better justification. Iraq and Afghanistan and the whole homeland security bit, and spending on Katrina are expensive but they are no WWII or great depression. And while I think FDR had some disastrous economic and tax policies, given the circumstances he properly gets cut a lot of slack on the spending increases. Pre FDR I don't really have the information at hand to make comparisons. But I understand that it was at times very high. The argument depends on what criteria you use and how much weight you give them, and how you asses blame for different problems and adjust for conditions. All in all I think its a stretch to say Bush was the worst president ever in this regard, but I couldn't say the claim was nonsense.