"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...

snip

Conveniently ignoring the fact that it was Bill Clinton, not G.W.
Bush,
who
ensured that China was awarded "most favored nation" trading status...

Which is why genuine economists consider Clinton to be an economic
conservative. He bought almost the whole program: "free" trade,
deregulation, limited welfare, balanced budgets, inflation-fighting, and
so
on. He was a Washington Consensus guy, from NAFTA to the IMF and the
World
Bank.

kaff

Whatsamatta, you don't like economic conservatives? d8-)

You made him sound so...so _human_, Ed. I can't get over it.


Bush is, too. The difference is that Bush doesn't have a clue about how
the
pieces are supposed to fit together. No Rhodes Scholar he, Bush just
follows
the economic programs he's told.

I'd be willing to bet that most of our Presidents have -not- been
Rhodes Scholars and have pretty much just listened to their economic
advisors all along.

Yup. But Clinton was not just listening to his advisors. In fact, he often
didn't follow the programs suggested by Robert Reich, even though he
valued
Reich's economic expertise.

He was dat li'l four foot tall effer, wunt he?

Jeez, he's 4'10". Don't make it tougher than it is on the little guy. If
Obama wins, he'll be baaaack.... I doubt if he'd have a functional role,
however. He'd probably be a member of the Council of Economic Advisors, or
something like that.

BTW, he wrote a book titled _I'll Be Short: Essentials for a Decent Working
Society_. He does have a sense of humor about his height.


And it's a good thing Jimmy Carter was a smart guy who knew enough about
economics to recognize that he needed to deep-six the entire Democratic
economic philosophy. When he put Paul Volcker in charge, and Volcker
started
squeezing the economy to wring out the inflation, the Dems were screaming
bloody murder. But Volcker was right; Reagan kept him on to finish the
job;
and he broke the back of inflation. Any Dem who was as clueless as Bush is
would have kept following his party's doctrine until the country imploded.
In fact, Bush almost did that himself -- and still might.


Shrub is Shrub; no further comment is necessary.

It's such a pleasure to be able to forget about him now. The damage has
been
done, and we'll be looking to others to try to undo it. It perks up my
whole
day.

Aw, hell, much of the damage he's done hasn't even filtered fully into
the system yet. Even with the Dems in control, we'll be aching from
his crap for long time to come. If OhDamnit and the evil Dems pick up
the loose strings he left regarding our civil rights, we's in a heap
'o trouble, pard.

No matter which one is elected, I expect that my mood will improve along
with that of the rest of the country. I don't blame Bush for the financial
meltdown and I don't think either Obama or McCain can do anything to speed a
recovery; they'll both support re-regulating the industry, and their
economic programs, at least as they're proposing them, will take a long time
to have any effect. Any recession that's on the way now is coming anyway.

--
Ed Huntress