[Skunk]

Originally posted by Ronn_Bman: When the economy is bad it's Bush's fault, and when it starts improving, that's only because of the Republican looting of Iraq. The truth is that if tomorrow both America and Iraq flowed with freedom, peace, milk, and honey, Bush would receive no credit and in fact would then be blamed for what's wrong with the rest of the world by those who don't like him. The truth is that only time will tell what only time can tell. The rest is nothing but guess work based on our individual opinions. What we do know for sure, and what isn't guess work is that right now the US economy has seen it's largest jump in 20 years despite those who would pooh-pooh it. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Actually Ronn, I'm *not* attributing the 'blip' as a result of looting Iraq - but rather as one of the results of looting the US Treasury to pay for Iraq and for tax cuts.

However, the money was never in the Treasury in the first place - instead, Bush has borrowed the money to pay for both the War on Terrorism and the War on Tax ($374 billion worth of loans last year). The problem with loans is that not only do you have to pay them back - but you have to pay the interest on them too.

Now, loans are not a bad thing if they are used to in a manner which improves the Balance of Trade. But they weren't used for this purpose, they were used to buy votes.

Right now there is a large Balance of Trade deficit; more goods are being imported into the US than exported. Thus US consumers have used their tax cuts/US govt. loans to buy goods and services which, on the whole, orginated abroad rather than at home. Foreign economies then, have benefited more from the US govt. loans than the US economy - a rather odd state of affairs, don't you think?

Meanwhile, the federal budget is still in the red. So Bush is still facing choices of either raising taxes, slashing budgets or borrowing yet more money (or a combination of all three). Only thing is, the increased loan repayments and interest have to be met too - while actual income from foreign trade is down.

As for whether the opinion is based on a personal disklike for Bush - refute that. You know, I absolutely *loathed* Reagan and Thatcher - but I give full credit for what they did for their respective economies. They took long term measures which served their respective countries very well.

Bush, on the other hand, never has time for long-term goals, whether it is the economy, or (cough!) diplomacy and security. He doesn't want to enact measures that will benefit Americans of tommorow in the way that Reagan did before him - he wants to keep the wealth to himself in the here and now, rather than bequeath prosperity upon future generations...

[ 11-03-2003, 06:18 AM: Message edited by: Skunk ]