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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (109838)	11/8/2007 2:10:01 PM
From: Tommaso	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

It sounds to me as if you give Bush credit for being able to keep two ideas in mind at the same time. He seems like a quadriplegic juggler to me in that respect.

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (109838)	11/8/2007 3:42:40 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

>A huge fiscal deficit combined with loosey goosey monetary regulation is the worst of all worlds. Bush is responsible for the first and appointed the guys in charge of the second. Tell me again why we shouldn't blame the guy responsible?< Bush did not appoint Greenspan who used easy money and negative real interest rates to bail out Wall St every time there was a banking and/or market crisis (and of course after 9/11) during his reign. Nor did he appoint Rubin who spent most of his time raping and pillaging the world with the IMF (there were other foolish moves made, but that's another issue) Frequent negative real and unnatural interest rates plus constant bailouts have contributed to the low savings rate and rapid expansion of credit that lead to the various excesses we have seen both before Bush and during his administration. That especially includes the massive current account deficit (which already existed and was growing rapidly before him). This is the primary long term issue for our currency because democracies tend to inflate out of their "foreign" obligations. These things really all started with Greenspan and his rolling bubbles. So feel to blame whoever appointed AG (I believe Regan). However, Greenspan was also glorified during the 8 years of Clinton too. I don't think anyone really deserves the blame other than Greenspan himself because the boobs in Washington don't even understand monetary policy (other than Ron Paul) and just go along with Wall St. I have some sympathy for Bernanke because he inherited a mess from Greenspan just like Bush inherited a mess from Clinton. But you have to hold both of them responsible for the actions they took in coping with the excesses they inherited. Bush made things worse by running deficits. The jury is still out on Bernanke. I don't like what I see so far, but he's better than Greenspan because at least he's tempted to do the right thing and remain tight. I don't believe in government investment. You can call it investment and technically it is sometimes, but there is no way to measure whether government investments are any good. They may seem good because they meet some set of "ideals" about what is good. But the only way you can measure an investment is to check profits/losses and see if there is an adequate ROIC. That's why government typically fails over the long haul. There is no measurement for success or failure other than meeting an objective and getting re- elcted. Adequate returns on capital for meeting the objective play no part. On a correct measurement, I doubt much that government does makes any sense over the long haul now or back in the 40s.