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Bush says economy is what???

post #1 of 14
12/17/07 at 8:51pm
Thread Starter 
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071217/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush


Bush says US economy is safe and sound HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. - President Bush on Monday tried to reassure an edgy public that the economy is "pretty good" despite the dreary mix of a failing housing market, a national credit crunch and surging energy costs.
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post #2 of 14
12/17/07 at 9:01pm
Don't forget to mention that the Fed has been futzing with the stock market, trying to maintain artificially high prices which is just totally fucked.
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post #3 of 14
12/17/07 at 9:25pm
It is safe and sound, if you're a rich-ass motherfucker.

At least until the rabble gets antsy and sticks your severed head on a post outside your ransacked mansion.
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post #4 of 14
12/17/07 at 9:34pm
The White House, eager to put Bush in a community environment, chose the Yak-A-Doo's restaurant in a Holiday Inn.

Yeah, why would any sane person think that things are going poorly...
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post #5 of 14
12/17/07 at 10:27pm
In other news, Bush is still stumped which came first: the rooster or the egg?
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post #6 of 14
12/18/07 at 12:32am
Comparable to the next two months when the credit companies announce a record amount of late\non payments due to the overspending of the holiday season, we ARE doing pretty good.
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post #7 of 14
12/18/07 at 1:24am
Right.

Quote:
The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush
The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy of George W. Bush: the economy. A Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz, sees a generation-long struggle to recoup.
by Joseph E. Stiglitz December 2007

The American economy can take a lot of abuse, but no economy is invincible. Illustration by Edward Sorel.

When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.

I can hear an irritated counterthrust already. The president has not driven the United States into a recession during his almost seven years in office. Unemployment stands at a respectable 4.6 percent. Well, fine. But the other side of the ledger groans with distress: a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—becomes a venture in high finance.

And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the technological powerhouse of the late 20th century. And although the president now understands—or so he says—that we must begin to wean ourselves from oil and coal, we have on his watch become more deeply dependent on both.

Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.
Remember the Surplus?

The world was a very different place, economically speaking, when George W. Bush took office, in January 2001. During the Roaring 90s, many had believed that the Internet would transform everything. Productivity gains, which had averaged about 1.5 percent a year from the early 1970s through the early 90s, now approached 3 percent. During Bill Clinton’s second term, gains in manufacturing productivity sometimes even surpassed 6 percent. The Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, spoke of a New Economy marked by continued productivity gains as the Internet buried the old ways of doing business. Others went so far as to predict an end to the business cycle. Greenspan worried aloud about how he’d ever be able to manage monetary policy once the nation’s debt was fully paid off.

This tremendous confidence took the Dow Jones index higher and higher. The rich did well, but so did the not-so-rich and even the downright poor. The Clinton years were not an economic Nirvana; as chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers during part of this time, I’m all too aware of mistakes and lost opportunities. The global-trade agreements we pushed through were often unfair to developing countries. We should have invested more in infrastructure, tightened regulation of the securities markets, and taken additional steps to promote energy conservation. We fell short because of politics and lack of money—and also, frankly, because special interests sometimes shaped the agenda more than they should have. But these boom years were the first time since Jimmy Carter that the deficit was under control. And they were the first time since the 1970s that incomes at the bottom grew faster than those at the top—a benchmark worth celebrating.

By the time George W. Bush was sworn in, parts of this bright picture had begun to dim. The tech boom was over. The nasdaq fell 15 percent in the single month of April 2000, and no one knew for sure what effect the collapse of the Internet bubble would have on the real economy. It was a moment ripe for Keynesian economics, a time to prime the pump by spending more money on education, technology, and infrastructure—all of which America desperately needed, and still does, but which the Clinton administration had postponed in its relentless drive to eliminate the deficit. Bill Clinton had left President Bush in an ideal position to pursue such policies. Remember the presidential debates in 2000 between Al Gore and George Bush, and how the two men argued over how to spend America’s anticipated $2.2 trillion budget surplus? The country could well have afforded to ramp up domestic investment in key areas. In fact, doing so would have staved off recession in the short run while spurring growth in the long run.

But the Bush administration had its own ideas. The first major economic initiative pursued by the president was a massive tax cut for the rich, enacted in June of 2001. Those with incomes over a million got a tax cut of $18,000—more than 30 times larger than the cut received by the average American. The inequities were compounded by a second tax cut, in 2003, this one skewed even more heavily toward the rich. Together these tax cuts, when fully implemented and if made permanent, mean that in 2012 the average reduction for an American in the bottom 20 percent will be a scant $45, while those with incomes of more than $1 million will see their tax bills reduced by an average of $162,000.
The rest is at Vanity Fair.com
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post #8 of 14
12/18/07 at 1:42am
There's Bush's American and then there's the rest of us. In Bush's America, everybody loves him, Iraq is a major success, and no one needs national health-care because you just go to the hospital and they just fix you up without charge.

This is what happens when you elect a guy that's never had to work for anything a day in his life.
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post #9 of 14
12/18/07 at 2:41am
In all fairness, and without doubting that the Bush administration has screwed up a lot of stuff especially in terms of rich vs. poor, what you guys see today is, quite real, one of the big problems of a free market capitalism, or a system close to it.
Capitalism in that form, and especially when capitalistic interests are also controlling the institutions meant to control THEM, namely the government and to a lesser extent the media, is inherently unstable. I think most people here know the idea, so I wont go into detail, but as the biggest almost-free-market economy, the USA are pretty much facing the result of their own economical system.
A century ago (or more, I am not that good with specific years) it was said that capitalism is a system that will crash and burn now and then, to be remade. A bit like the phoenix legendary creature, I suppose. Perhaps we arent that far away from the next crash? I sincerely hope not, and of course the clock runs differently in other countries. But it sure looks like a collapse of some sort isnt too far away.

Fun stuff, barely related: the Austrian Mail Service was privatized, subsequently fired 1500 workers from an already understaffed company, now has more misdeliveries and delay times than ever, and spent most of the money gained/saved on the salary of an additional manager who does.... well, play golf.
And they get away with it
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post #10 of 14
12/18/07 at 2:43am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt Goldberg
This is what happens when you elect a guy that's never had to work for anything a day in his life.
Hey now, not all of us born with a silver spoon in our mouth are that self-unaware.
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post #11 of 14
12/18/07 at 2:51am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Khaunshar
In all fairness, and without doubting that the Bush administration has screwed up a lot of stuff especially in terms of rich vs. poor, what you guys see today is, quite real, one of the big problems of a free market capitalism, or a system close to it.
Capitalism in that form, and especially when capitalistic interests are also controlling the institutions meant to control THEM, namely the government and to a lesser extent the media, is inherently unstable. I think most people here know the idea, so I wont go into detail, but as the biggest almost-free-market economy, the USA are pretty much facing the result of their own economical system.
A century ago (or more, I am not that good with specific years) it was said that capitalism is a system that will crash and burn now and then, to be remade. A bit like the phoenix legendary creature, I suppose. Perhaps we arent that far away from the next crash? I sincerely hope not, and of course the clock runs differently in other countries. But it sure looks like a collapse of some sort isnt too far away.

Fun stuff, barely related: the Austrian Mail Service was privatized, subsequently fired 1500 workers from an already understaffed company, now has more misdeliveries and delay times than ever, and spent most of the money gained/saved on the salary of an additional manager who does.... well, play golf.
And they get away with it
I don't see why capitalism necessarily has to crash and burn at some point. Certainly the brand of capitalism we have fostered, one in which economic growth is presumed to be limitless, one in which a steady profit is a disappointment, certainly that capitalism is untenable. The problems with capitalism generally stem from its abstraction from the function it serves, when it is seen as a method of pursuing greater capital instead of an efficient means for people to acquire the material goods they need and want. But why couldn't a more reasonable slant on capitalism find sustainability?
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post #12 of 14
12/18/07 at 3:09am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt Goldberg
This is what happens when you elect a guy that's never had to work for anything a day in his life.
Actually, I believe he knows exactly what he's doing. He, and the corporate overlords who are his running buddies, is overextending the government's finances, wrecking the infrastructure, and gutting the military via overuse and privatization, in order to deliberately destroy the stability of the state and thereby clear the way for the rise of the nationless megaconglomerates. The biggest companies are already borderless, and the only thing keeping them in check is the regulatory strength of a major superpower. You cut the legs out from under the United States, put it on a playing field where it's the economic equal of several other nations but subordinate to private financial interests, and you've got yourself a new Gilded Age. It'll take another couple of generations to get there, but we're seeing the primary groundwork laid in this administration, after a couple of decades of cigar-den plotting. Bush knows he's hated, but what does he care? He'll never have to face a single one of us, and if the plan comes together, the American experiment will draw to a close, and the corporations will rewrite history to make him a hero. Because from their point of view, he will be.
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post #13 of 14
12/18/07 at 3:26am
Quote:
Originally Posted by JuddL
Hey now, not all of us born with a silver spoon in our mouth are that self-unaware.
Agreed. But this is a man so privileged that I can't help but think that he ran for President not out of duty or even ego but because he thought it would be a good gig.
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post #14 of 14
12/18/07 at 3:34am
Bush wants to privatize America. Welcome to privately run cities where the rich cut funding to the poor outlying areas and wall themselves in. Escape from Atlanta, Escape from New Orleans.
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