Billy T,
He seemed clueless when expressing his 'outrage' at AIG when it was his own adminstration that OKed the bonuses. Is he as prone to making goofs as 'GWB'?
Here you go again Billy, with libelous and false accusations. I agree the war on Iraq was a very bad judgement call, but it is simply false and libelous to state Bush started the war to "steal France and Russia's oil contracts" for Halliburton and Blackwater. Halliburton was given the contract to REPAIR the oil fields damaged after the war began. The critizism was that the contracts were awarded without competitive bids. Blackwater is a private security operation that has nothing to do with oil.Before I had ever heard of "subprime" or of Obama, and based on only the stupidity of GWB´s economic and foreign policy (Especially the needless war designed to steal France and Russia´s Iraq oil contracts for GWB´s friends and corporate supporters like Halliburton and Blackwater)
You predicted oil at over $200 a barrel, the Dow over 15,000, and a hyperinflating dollar. You essentially based those predictions on the high costs of commuting due to the high cost of gas because the US was too 'spread out' instead of everyone living inside the cities and taking public transportation.I was able to foresee the current economic disaster was unavoidable. (And posted descriptions of what has happend here in many threads.)
Bush's main mistake was the expensive and ill-concieved war in Iraq. 9/11 happened during his watch, but can hardly be blamed on Bush since he was only in office a short time. The stock market and economy crashed after 9/11 and Bush did what most all economists recommend to quickly stimulate the economy. He lowered taxes. Corporations as well as individuals pay taxes and the idea was that they would reinvest the money in the economy. What he and his adminstration had stupidly forgotten was the changes in trade policies by Bill Clinton. Clinton was responsible for ramming NAFTA and admitting China to the WTO during his adminstration. Like you said, the investments went to Mexico and China instead of the US, good for them but bad for US workers. The importers and retailers made out like bandits, while manufacturing jobs disappeared for the US workforce. Easy money came from China as they could not spend the US dollars there, so they supplied much of the money that eventually funded the housing bubble. If Greenspan had half the smarts he was credited for, he would have recognized the bubbles forming from the easy credit and increased lending rates. He didn't. The economic mess started with Clinton's free trade policies, was enhanced by Bush's tax cuts not being eliminated after recover started again after 9/11, and by Greenspan's inaction on interest rates. The US congress contributed greatly by changing the law to allow commercial banks and insurers to operate as hedge funds, risking people's savings in high risk financial instruments. There is plenty of blame to spread around, not just on 'GWB'.Thus, there can be no doubt that this is GWB´s and the Republican´s mess Obama is trying to clean up.
I admit that three years before the end of GWB´s term as POTUS, I only partly understood the full stupidity of his tax relief for the already very rich (again benefits for his friends and supporter).
I like Obama personally, but I have come to be much less 'impressed' with his intelligence and deep understanding. I have seen him make several errors that I detected instantly. I don't consider myself intelligent enough to lead the country, yet I can see blunders he makes. For instance, on the Jay Leno show, Obama was speaking of future hybrid and electric cars and stated his desire that the batteries for such cars be made in the US, instead of Japan as they are now. The lithium batteries he was referring to are not made in Japan, but in China and South Korea. GM is supposed to assemble cells imported from South Korea into battery packs for the Volt-type cars and eventually LG is supposed to build a factory in the US to make the cells IF and WHEN the cars have a large enough sales volume to support a special battery cell factory. Obama is usually very good at reading from a teleprompter when making a speech, but he also recently made a stupid mistake reading a hosting governor's speech instead of his own, thanking himself for being there.I am very impressed with Obama´s intellignce, leadership, persuasive powers, sincere desire to server* the people of the US, deep understanding of the mess GWB left him,