On Mon, 17 Sep 2007 09:48:18 -0500, Alan Smithee <AlanSmithee@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>Greenspan's memoirs: Clinton saved, Bush spent
>WA****NGTON POST
>
>
>Bob Woodward
>September 18, 2007
>
>FORMER US president Bill Clinton emerges as the political hero in the
>memoirs of one of America's most powerful and influential economists
>of the past two decades, Alan Greenspan.
>
>Greenspan, who served as Federal Reserve chairman for 18 years,
>praises Clinton's mind and his tough anti-deficit policies, calling
>the former president's 1993 economic plan "an act of political
>courage".
He seems to have forgotten that Slick was elected on his promise to lower
taxes. The
courage Greenspan lauds him for is his thumbing his nose at the voters
almost
immediately after taking office and going in another direction. Just
proving the
point that the Clintons will say anything to get elected, but don't take
it to the
bank.
>
>But in his new book, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,
>he levels unusually harsh criticism at President George Bush and the
>Republican Party, arguing that Bush abandoned the central conservative
>principle of fiscal restraint.
So? Even most Republicans will agree with that....
>
>Greenspan accuses the Republicans, who held the majority in the US
>House of Representatives until last year, of being too eager to
>tolerate excessive federal spending in exchange for political
>op****tunity. The Republicans, he says, deserved to lose control of
>Congress.
True, but with any luck they've come back to their senses and will say and
do the
right things come November 2008 and beyond.
>
>But he adds later: "I don't think the Democrats won. It was the
>Republicans who lost. The Democrats came to power in the Congress
>because they were the only party left standing."
Also true. It took no time at all for the Democrats to prove how
incompetent they
are.
>
>When Bush and Cheney won the 2000 election, Greenspan writes: "I
>thought we had a golden op****tunity to advance the ideals of
>effective, fiscally conservative government and free markets … I was
>soon to see my old friends veer off to unexpected directions."
>
>By the end of last year, Greenspan writes with some bitterness,
>governance had "become dangerously dysfunctional".
Sadly, this is true.
>
>In contrast, he calls Clinton a "risk taker" who had shown a
>"preference for dealing in facts", and presents Clinton and himself
>almost as soul mates. "Here was a fellow information hound … We both
>read books and were curious and thoughtful about the world … I never
>ceased to be surprised by his fascination with economic detail: the
>effect of Canadian lumber on housing prices and inflation … He had an
>eye for the big picture too."
Well, I certainly agree that Clinton is a risk taker. We had almost eight
years
worth of scandals to prove it.
>During Clinton's first weeks as president, Greenspan went to the Oval
>Office and explained the danger of not confronting the federal
>deficit. Unless the deficits were cut, there could be "a financial
>crisis," Greenspan told the president.
>
>"President Clinton's old-fa****oned attitude toward debt might have had
>a more lasting effect on the nation's priorities. Instead, his
>influence was diluted by the uproar about Monica Lewinsky."
>
>When he first heard and read details of the Clinton-Lewinsky
>encounters, Greenspan writes: "I was incredulous. 'There is no way
>these stories could be correct,' I told my friends. 'No way."'
>
>Later, when it was verified, Greenspan says: "I wondered how the
>president could take such a risk. It seemed so alien to the Bill
>Clinton I knew, and made me feel disappointed and sad."
Obviously, he had never known Bill Clinton that well.
>
>Known for his restrained, if not incomprehensible, public statements
>over the past several decades, Greenspan's direct criticism of Bush
>and his economic policies comes as the economy is emerging as an issue
>in the 2008 presidential race.
Nothing like biting the hands that fed one for so many years, is there?
>
>And the man Greenspan praises so highly for fiscal probity is married
>to the current front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Senator
>Hillary Clinton.
Which makes one wonder what he wants for himself or perhaps his wife in
the new
administration.
>
>Though cautious about the coming decades, Greenspan ultimately shows a
>flash of hope: "Adaptation is in our nature," he writes, "a fact that
>leads me to be deeply optimistic about our future."
>
>http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/greenspans-memoirs-clinton-saved-bush-spent/2007/09/17/1189881433621.html
>
>
>"Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any
>very remarkable felicities of expression." - Amos Bronson Alcott
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