Quote Originally Posted by GoldenBoy812
I do not think much of it is Bush's fault at all. Maybe you can make the argument that the federal governments dramatic increase in size caused for a debasement of the currency, but Bush really just inherrited this mess. He inherrited Greenspan who lowered interest rates to their lowest level (Keynesian measure) in decades (50's).
I disagree that Bush inheritted this mess. THIS mess is mostly about the mortgage meltdown and real-estate bubble spreading throughout the economy. We did not have a real-estate bubble or mortgage financing bubble at the time Bush came into office. And the Fed Chairman serves at the pleasure of the President. If Greenspan was a problem that Bush inherrited, all he had to do was assign someone else.

When a president inherrits a problem (and I'm not agreeing that is entirely the case with Bush), then it is up to him to DO something about it. You can't just sit on a problem for 8 years not doing anything about it, and then say, "Well I didn't cause this --- I inherrited it!"

The other part to this mess, is the lack of room to maneuver, and that is mostly due to the massive debt. Again, Bush is not responsible for the enitre debt, but he is responsible for a very large portion of it! The massive Bush tax cuts and the cost of the unnecessary Iraq war have driven the debt so high, that there is very little room to borrow our way out of this situation.

We are just about completely painted into a corner. There is very little room to drop interest rates to stimulate the economy, and it might trigger inflation anyway. A bailout might be necessary, but who will lend us that much money, and under what terms? Maybe we'll just "print" the money, and we're back to inflation again. Maybe we'll need to rais taxes in order to deal with the problem, but what will that do to the economy?

We are getting into a situation where we are very susceptible to having our economy held hostage. Any number of foregin countries could kick us right over the edge --- massive oil embargo, dumping dollars to devalue the currency, another terrorist attack.