Hey Big Spender ..
At last, Alan Greenspan speaks in a language we can understand -- he says Bush and Cheney effed-up this country.
From The New York Times: "WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — Alan Greenspan, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades, in a long-awaited memoir, is harshly critical of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the Republican-controlled Congress, as abandoning their party’s principles on spending and deficits.
In the 500-page book, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” Mr. Greenspan describes the Bush administration as so captive to its own political operation that it paid little attention to fiscal discipline...
...Mr. Bush, he writes, was never willing to contain spending or veto bills that drove the country into deeper and deeper deficits, as Congress abandoned rules that required that the cost of tax cuts be offset by savings elsewhere. “The Republicans in Congress lost their way,”
“They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose” in the 2006 election, when they lost control of the House and Senate.
...Of the presidents he worked with, Mr. Greenspan reserves his highest praise for Bill Clinton, whom he described in his book as a sponge for economic data who maintained “a consistent, disciplined focus on long-term economic growth.” [..]
So .. this self-described "lifelong libertarian Republican" said Clinton was the most economically literate.
How about them apples?
We already knew Clinton was an economic whiz kid. It's nice to see him getting the credit he deserves .. and says a lot about how the two presidents will be compared by historians on economic policy. Clinton will come out looking like Thomas Jefferson compared to Bush.
I still can't figure out why Democrats don't crow louder about fiscal responsibility .. compared to this batch of Republicans, they have certainly earned it.
So .. a Democratic president balanced the budget .. and when the Republicans had all three branches of government, we ran up the largest debt in history.
Bush and the GOP flushed their reputation for fiscal conservatism down the toilet years ago.
And after Bush started trashing our economy Greenspan presided over the Fed for another five years .. he needed to speak out when it would have done some good. Too bad he had to wait until he had an $8.5-million book deal to tell us all this.
Too little five years too late.
Too many stayed around kissing Bush's arse -- Colin Powell, Jack Goldsmith, Paul O'Neill, George Tenet, etc. -- and those who weren't puckering up said nothing, when it was obvious that Bush was in way over his head, and was doing things destructive to our country.
Now, economics and high finance isn't really my cuppa tea, but I'd like to point out that even though Greenspan was the father of a great "asset bubble", he also promoted easy-credit policies and toxic adjustable-rate mortgages that are now ruining so many American families and causing them to lose their homes.
Greenspan was the best friend the credit industry ever had.
PS -- I was glad he said this: "I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows -- the Iraq war is largely about oil."
See .. it's not only leftie moonbats who think that.
