Maybe he's not the messiah

[SallyLightfoot]

I don't think Clinton's hands are entirely clean on this matter, but also think he isn't the cause of this mess either. Once the dot-com bubble burst, Clinton and his economic advisers were happy to use the real-estate bubble to help re-inflate the economy. At that time, this new bubble was seen as a benefit (promoting home ownership, economic growth thru consumer debt), and Greenspan started pushing interest rates to historic lows. GWB was fine to ride that wave, and along with his jobs spending (aka the Iraq war), it gave him a meager economic expansion.

No-one wanted the real-estate bubble to burst, and GWB's admin (like Clinton) wanted to kick the can down the road for future admin. The Bush admin was well aware of the dangers of the bubble, but it's unlikely that they realized that the banks and investment banks were making things infinitely worse through sky-high leverage and unregulated derivatives (which were decoupled from any backing assets).

Nonetheless, every president arrives on the scene with a set of issues they inherit from the previous admin. A president has to accept responsibility for what happens on his/her watch, and that applies equally to Obama. GWB made a lot of mistakes, but he also had bad luck. Of all the bad things that can happen to an administration, I'd say that GWB got nailed by everything except the bird-flu pandemic. That's about the only slack I'll grant GWB -- he had bad luck, but much of the bad that happened during his admin happened because he wasn't up to the challenge of these times.

[enzfan]

Off another 300 points today, down to 1997 levels. And the government keeps pissing away billions more to failing unfixable companies.[xx(]

[SallyLightfoot]

I'm not terribly worried about the stock market, but I am worried about the economy. Stock market indices (esp. the DJII, which is only 30 companies) bounce all over the place and often reflect investor/institutional psychology more than business fundamentals.

Of course, another way of looking at it is,"This is the buying opportunity of a lifetime."

Unfortunately, the government needs to do whatever it can to prevent the system from collapsing. Fed Chair Bernanke is reported to have said,"If we don't save the banks, people will no longer speak of the Great Depression-- because this one will be far worse."

[SallyLightfoot]

John Stewart sums up the Dow pretty well

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index ... -knows-all