Re: {OT} Dow's Decline Is Fastest for a New President in Nearly a Century

How would things be if GW Bush had been able to serve a third presidential term?

How about if Bill Clinton had served a third term?

Ed

8 years of proof that GW Bush fouled up almost completely -- deficits, wars, and TARP, but Obama has been president for just 7 weeks, so you blame him for everything.

No wonder you're Rush Limbaugh's lap dog.

Things would be better because neither Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John McCain, nor any Republican but GW Bush would have fouled up everything nearly so badly.

I forgot that the savings & loan industry bankruptcy started when Clinton was President in the early 1980s and was among the many Democrats who supported the Garn-St. Germain deregulation of the banking industry.

Unlike GW Bush, Clinton knew how to negotiate the stormy economic waters (so did his predecessor), and in his first term began to correct the excesses of Reagan. One result was a balanced budget in almost every year of Clinton's second term, while GW Bush, with the same party in charge of Congress for 75% of his presidency, ran nothing but big deficits.

What would the DJI and unemployment rate be with GW Bush still in office? Give numbers.

There are two big problems with your statement:

1. GW Bush favored a 15% maximum tax on dividends, but small businesses don't pay dividends. They either finance themselves through borrowing, or they issue stock and pay practically no dividends. This dividend legislation favored big, old companies, the only ones that usually pay dividends.

1. GW Bush increased government spending more than any US president of the past 50 years, and one of his last acts in office was TARP, the biggest piece of socialist legislation since the Great Society. But unlike the Great Society programs, TARP was welfare for the rich.

Not just Reuben but also Larry Summers, his successor at Treasury and now Obama's chief economic adviser.

Irrelevant, but that did eliminate a shift of wealth from workers, who paid the debt, to the rich, who owned it. Unfortunately we don't have that choice to pay off public debt now because of the economy's weakness.

Wow, but did you miss the point. Clinton had nothing to do with the S&L debacle of the 1980s because he wouldn't be President for another decade. Similarly, Clinton has nothing to do with the 2007-present recession because he hasn't been in office for eight years. The person who was President when this recession started is largely at fault for it. Notice I didn't blame the latter president for the

3/2001 recession because that wouldn't be fair.

I see. You're saying Clinton is responsible for national matters that happened both way before and way after he was President.

Every credible source, including McClatchy newspapers, says you're wrong. Credit default swaps and greed by Wall Street and lenders are the real causes.

That would be people who voted for GW Bush and opposed government regulation.

Cite some of those articles (not editorials). I mentioned Garn-St. Germain, and I opposed the repeal of Glass-Steagal, which every GW Bush supporter favored, except maybe Ben Stein. Also I mentioned that Clinton had the skill to maneuver the nation safely through rough economic waters, something GW Bush completely lacked.

You haven't obviously paid attention to my posts praising Republicans Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower or my criticism of Bill Clinton. Worse, you don't realize just how incompetent a president GW Bush had been, even though you eventually quit supporting him.

Are you one of those morons who voted for GW Bush and bankrupted the US?

GW Bush and Dick Cheney should have been impeached and convicted, but the Democrats were too cowardly to even think of doing the right thing. And then Congress should have 25ed John McCain into office, and he would have kept us out of Iraq, even though he said the same things about Saddam and WMDs as GW Bush did. The difference was that McCain understood brinkmanship better (you go to the brink, not over it).

What mythology? Clinton said, in 1992, he would do what he did about the economy, and at the end of his presidency there was serious talk that the US government would be completely out of debt in a few decades. Clinton was our most fiscally responsible President since Eisenhower.

So how do you explain the good GDP growth rates and decreasing debt during the Clinton years?

Don't hold your breath waiting for the answer to that last question. Expect a smoke screen.