[Vision2020] It's a pea-souper out there

[Joan Opyr]

Pat writes:

"I am not an economist either but I hear them all saying that it wasn't a
true growth, stable time for the economy. I still didn't feel 'safe' because
all those attacks happened in other countries and Clinton did nothing about
them."


Okay, let's clear up some of this economic fog.  What economists, exactly, do you hear saying this, Pat?  Not James K. Galbraith.  Not Joan Robinson, Lou Dobbs, Gordon Tullock, Eugene Fama . . . not even Alan Greenspan, who famously warned of "irrational exuberance" in the stock market.  The economy was stable under Clinton, and the overall growth rate was excellent.  What you seem to be doing here is confusing economic growth with the bubble in the tech market that developed late in Clinton's second term.  Though market bubbles certainly have an effect on overall economic wealth (as do their inevitable implosions) the Clinton era was clearly marked by steady economic growth in virtually all sectors of the economy, not just in Amazon stock.  In the 1990s, the Clintonistas turned a federal budget deficit into a multi-trillion dollar surplus, an eight-year economic achievement Mr. Bush was able to not only undo but utterly reverse in a mere twelve months.  If we're going to have a sensible economic discussion on this list, then we're going to have to brush up on our Adam Smith; we're going to have to get our terms straight.  Mr. Clinton's reign was part of the longest sustained economic expansion in US history, and that ain't just blowing bubbles.

BTW, after it was determined that Al Qaeda was responsible for the bombing of our embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole, President Clinton ordered the firing of sixty SCUD missiles at Osama bin Laden's hidey-hole in Afghanistan.  By all accounts, we missed bin Laden by inches.  I don't call that "doing nothing."  Now, dicking around with neo-conservative dreams about wiping out Saddam Hussein for nine months after you've been warned repeatedly and explicitly that the greatest current threat to the US is Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda -- that's what I call doing nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing.  Mr. Bush did spend the entire month of August 2001 on his Texas ranch, clearing brush.  Mr. Bush might be short-sighted, but I would never suggest that he's lazy.  It's hot down there in August -- whoo, doggie.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment        Get more from the Web.  FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
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