Like a whole bunch of other people, you were cheerleading – and starting threads trumpeting how well the Bush economy was doing puts you squarely in the “cheerleader” camp no matter how you try and spin it now – the biggest financial bubble in history. Of course you’re going to get good economic numbers during a bubble. Look how much house prices went up by! But after the air comes out of the bubble things look rather different. The bottom line is that whether you thought there was a bubble or not, you were cheerleading a bunch of economic statistics that were entirely bubble-driven. And after having witnessed the spectacular failure of your deregulationist free market ideology, something you admit you’d have liked to have seen even more of, you’re now making hilarious claims that defending the actual numbers at the time, numbers which were entiely dependent on the pro-growth policies that you supported and which led to economic meltdown, somehow absolves you from having been spectacularly wrong.
You were the one who was ignorant and the people claiming that the whole thing was bubble driven were right. Now you can answer the question :
The things that made the economy from roughly 2004 to 2007 “good.” The artificially low interest rates, the reckless and unsustainable extension of credit, the tax cuts etc. Would you say now, with the benefit of hindsight and everything, that these were sensible economic policies? Something worth praising?
The cites I found saying that he was for a housing bubble in fact quote him as saying in 2001 and 2002 that the Fed should lower interest rates to help jumpstart the economy, including the jumpstarting of the housing market. No doubt about that. But telling your kid to eat a ham sandwich does not mean you are telling him to swallow the entire pig.
He did know what a disaster it was going to cause. From 2005 And from Dec. 2007.
If only Greenspan had listened instead of denying the problem.
BTW, mind giving some cites showing there was a widespread claim the 2001 recession was the worst since the Great Depression? That the recovery was the slowest is something else entirely.
I heard the 17% underemployment number just yesterday, in fact. It is no big secret. However, blaming it on Obama is a bit much, isn’t it? Bush pushed us off this cliff. Well, that is harsh. Bush did nothing while the deregulated mortgage companies and investment banks pushed us off the cliff. The best economic decision Bush made in 8 years was to not even pretend to give advice about the crisis at the end of his term.
The cost of living didn’t go up? Sure it did. But the indicators they used did not reflect that. Do you shop for groceries? Medicare supplementals merely doubled. Cost of living went up plenty.
By the way, as a post-script, I thought I should add that the four Democratic presidents who were not opposed in the house or senate were Carter, LBJ, Kennedy and FDR. As a result, the deficit figures included the Great Depression. While it is only fair to include all data, it is worth noting that if you exclude FDR, the average annual change in deficit for unopposed Democratic presidents was 911 million (compared again to the average change in all other circumstances, excluding FDR, of 8.0 billion).
So, excluding FDR and the Great Depression, the annual increase in the deficit when Democrats control government is $7.1 billion lower.
This game of selectively quoting me from the past to show that I was a ‘cheerleader’ for Bush is getting a little surreal. But I decided what the hell, I’ll go back and see what kinds of negative things i said about him.
I also notice that Hentor took part in that thread, of whcih my bush-bashing message was a fairly large part. I also notice that he saw fit not to include it as a counter-example, even though that thread comes up in the search he recommended. Pretty dishonest, Hentor.
Far from being a ‘cheerleader’, I was a reluctant supporter of the lesser of two evils. Note that I said I ‘detest’ many of his policies. Not exactly sugar-coating it, am I?
And gee, I notice that Hentor participated in that thread as well, and responded to that very message.
I repeated in that same thread: “I’m no fan of Bush’s, but I wind up being the guy who has to defend him because of the constant distortions and historical revisionism that goes on around here.”
Hentor was also a participant in that thread, and in fact responded to these messages. Funny he couldn’t remember them when choosing quotes of mine to ‘prove’ that I’m an unwavering Bush-lover.
There I go sugar coating my opinion on Bush again.
I could go on. There are many similar examples. And what do you know, selective quoting now shows that I’m a rabid Bush hater!
Now, do me a favor. Hentor, this isn’t the first time you’ve completely derailed a thread by changing the subject to a personal attack on me. I understand you have a major hard-on for me for some reason, but we’re not doing the other posters any favors by writing pages of personal attacks and rebuttals. So from now on, how about you just start a pit thread and link to it. I promise I’ll come along and play if you do.
Not to agree with Sam or anything, but what interest this thread has for me doesn’t include discussing his personal failings, imaginary or otherwise. There’s a whole 'nother forum where that could be taking place.
He said more than that. He said that his analysis of bubbles suggested that the reason popped bubbles lead to recessions is because governments are not fast enough to cut interest rates. He feeling was that a rapid cut in interest rates (beyond what Greenspan had done) would either re-inflate the bubble or cause another one to form, thus keeping the economy rolling along. He apparently wasn’t concerned about a prospect of a liquidity trap at all.
In 2004, John Kerry said that the economy was the worst since Herbert Hoover, leading to this thread. Granted, most participants distanced themselves from that extreme characterization but then came up with lots of reason why the economy was still very bad.
But now I have to issue a mea culpa on this one. My memory of what went on is probably too punctuated by the occasional rants of the more extreme members, because I just took the time to read through a number of those economics threads, and by and large the debates were pretty good, with plenty of valid points being made by the left, and plenty of people on both sides who were quite reasonable about their description of the economy. So I think I’ll retract this one.
Certainly Obama doesn’t deserve much blame for the crap sandwich he was handed - only that which resulted from his voting record as Senator. But in my opinion, almost every decision he’s made since being president has had a negative effect on the economy. But that’s another debate.
Gieven the structural differences between a parliamentary system and a congressional system, I doubt very much that the Canadian example would work in the U.S. Divided government, where one party controls the Congress and the other the Presidency, may work in some cases, but not where the two parties agree to pass each other’s spending proposals.
In the U.S. there simply isn’t the equivalent to strict party discipline, coupled with exectutive control over spending proposals, which is a feature of the Canadian and other Westminster systems. I would argue that it is those structural differences which allowed the Canadian governments to cut spending, once there was the political will to do so (both at the level of the party in power, and at the voters’ level).
I wouldn’t mind adopting Canada’s financial industry regulatory approach, since I believe that’s largely responsible for Canada not having to spend tons of money bailing out its financial system.
All very valid points. I said much the same in another thread a while back, saying that we could do public health care because our governmental system allowed it to happen, whereas in the U.S. each attempt to implement large complex programs like this turns into a pork-laden, incoherent mess. It’s just the nature of the system. Too many free votes means too much bartering and too many opportunities for corruption.
There was no Great Bush Economy. We know now that it was the equivalent of the man falling off a building, flapping his arms and believing he was flying.
Since all the hue and cry erupted over the projected deficit of $1.3 trillion for 2010, including from the OP, and since much of this is cast in the light of Obama being some kind of socialist running up deficit spending, I wanted to put some numbers on things.
However, despite all the attention, I found it kind of hard to find a clear statement as to what the deficit was in 2009. Since 2009 is really the last year to be attributed to Bush, an evaluation of Obama in regards to the deficit depends on the relative change from 2009 to 2010.
Got a cite? Not that I doubt you, but I’m curious about when he said it. Recently he has said that the Fed’s recent lowering of interest rates was the right thing to do, but then went beyond it to propose a stimulus when lowering the rate to near zero wasn’t good enough (just like in Japan.) Lowering interest rates to combat a recession is not exactly a radical proposal. Between then and now, he wrote many times of the need to slowly take the air out of the housing bubble, advice which was clearly not followed.
Okay, we mostly didn’t say it. I’m clearly not going to be too worried about Kerry’s political statement mapping to reality. IIRC, job gains finally picked up in 2004, if compensation didn’t, so that the economy was bad (for the average person, not for CEOs and the market) is at least arguable.
But thanks for the retraction. I don’t think getting into the health of the 2004 economy is too useful for anyone at this point.
Most economists disagree, and we’d have to discuss whether the course he could have taken in the absence of Republican (and blue dog Dems, to be fair) would have been better.
Fama was interviewed in the recent New Yorker article on how U of C economists have reacted to the crisis, and he was clearly in deep denial. He came across as the economist version of Fred Hoyle. It happens, scientists are human too.