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 : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mistermj who wrote (168377)	8/8/2011 5:33:12 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 544047

Surely you aren't suggesting the entire dot com infrastructure and technology was built over night by Clinton? Well, actually since the Web that we all use today didn't actually come into being until Clinton's first term, there is a sense in which that is true. However, you are right to suggest that there was a great deal of work and investment--largely funded by the government that you in other contexts scorn--that enabled the dot.com infrastructure. That said, you are right, Clinton was the beneficiary of some luck. But--so was Reagan. He had the good luck of having Volcker being the Fed Chairman when he came into office, although he himself gave future presidents and the country the "gift" of choosing Alan Greenspan to succeed him. Second, he had the good luck of having Volcker raise interest rates higher than anyone in the country ever had before in order to kill inflation--something that was in the process of happening when he was elected and was one important reason for his election. And while that raising continued for a time when he was in office, Reagan had the third good fortune of being in office when it was ending, and those high interest rates that choked both the economy and the inflation that was afflicting the country at the time came down. Fourth, Reagan had the good fortune of being in office when oil prices were collapsing. And fifth, he had to good luck of being office when Japan and the Four Tigers of Asia were beginning to provide cheap goods to the US, as well as export markets (although Europe and Canada were more important export markets at the time; still, the Asian markets helped on the margin). Those factors--lower inflation, collapsing oil prices, lower interest rates, cheap offshore labor, expanding markets overseas--were responsible more than Reagan's tax cuts for what you call " the massive Reagan economic expansion." It strikes me as quite peculiar how people attribute what happened under Clinton to Reagan, but what happened after January 21 2009 had nothing to do with Bush and everything to do with Obama.

To: mistermj who wrote (168377)	8/8/2011 6:22:01 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 544047

"Surely you aren't suggesting the entire dot com infrastructure and technology was built over night by Clinton" Not in the least. Al Gore invented the internet.