4 ms·

Bush was pretty unlucky. 2 massive crashes during his presidency.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Ya, and neither were completely his fault. However, I do fault him for juicing a good economy when stimulus would be more effective during a downturn when not wasted during upturns. Save in good times, spend in bad would do a lot for stability. 2008 could have been handled much better if he was disciplined enough during the recovery in between (besides, taking more money out of the system would have acted against bubbles). In contrast, the Clinton surplus going into the dotcom bust made it much easier to deal with. Trump is making similar mistakes, and if a problem occurs on his watch, he is going to have fewer tools to deal with it (and pressuring the Fed to cut rates during a boom is unforgivable). Unfortunately, Americans seem to neither want taxes to go up or interest rates to rise in good times so they can go down in bad. They just want them to go down all the time. So we are the most at fault after all.
- autokad 7y ago
  people forget Bush was fighting an energy recession, and those were a godsend to many. my brother used the money to apply for college and buy books to give college a go and see how it is, he's an MD now. I disagreed with almost everything Bush did, but that was not one of them. The same is true for Trump, in the sense had it not been for the Trump tax cuts, we would be in a recession right now.
  - cannonedhamster 7y ago
    How, praytell would we be in a recession right now if not for tax cuts that barely made an impact for the vast majority of Americans? The economy was good when he took it over and despite everything he's trying to do to destroy it, it seems to be getting to the point of overheating. His tariffs will cool that though as people being to feel a 20% increase in all of the good that they buy and people start losing work because there's no one able to buy. Don't forget the record highs right before the last recession. Corporate debt is at unsustainable amounts and we have to pay for our debt at some point. Money doesn't just continue to come from nothing. While I don't disagree with everything he's done, President Trump has caused lasting damage to our economy, our country, and our status in the world that will take generations to fix, if the country survives that long. We seem to be at a point where a rock and a hard place have met, that only bloodshed or external conflict will remedy. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
  - aaronbrethorst 7y ago
    A year later, it’s very clear that the tax cuts boosted gross domestic product and jobs a bit — and just for one year. Its effects are fading as U.S. GDP growth appears likely to weaken in 2019. The only thing that “rocked” were corporate profits and the stock market. And we’re facing trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-official-the-trump-tax-cuts-were-a-bust-2019-01-30 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-official-the-trump-tax...
    - autokad 7y ago
      that doesn't conflict with anything i said.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  The problem with "save in good times, spend in bad" is that people don't actually save in good times. Even if you raise interest rates, people will still borrow money when times are good because that's when there's profit to be made by investing the borrowed money. They do it less when rates are higher, but they still do it. The "problem" with the natural cycle is that in bad times people start to default on their debts, which would otherwise cause banks to raise rates to account for the higher risk, which would cause even more defaults. By central banks lowering rates at those times you prevent that from happening, but at the cost of ballooning everyone's debt out of control. Because then people affected by the downturn can borrow even more money at the low rates. So we borrow in good times and borrow even more in bad times. Real debt per capita has been increasing for decades, which obviously isn't sustainable. But that's what Keynesianism does -- it defers a crash by allowing otherwise uncreditworthy people to take on additional debt rather than filing for bankruptcy, but nobody ever pays the debt back. Now the problem is times are good except that everybody has too much debt, which is only fine because interest rates are low. Raise them and everything falls apart as the money people are currently using to buy stuff and live their lives is suddenly required to make interest payments on existing debt. What we need at this point is for people to pay off their debts. But they can't, because the money they borrowed is now inside corporations that never spend it. So we need to either find a way for that money to get out of corporations and back into the hands of regular people (without crashing the stock market), or print a bunch of new money that isn't derived from debt and give that to regular people so they can use that to pay back their debts with.
  - 2reach1 7y ago
    > 'What we need at this point is people paying off their debt!' Debt... ('contextless OT) ...shortage... damn! Just for a second i remembered a picture of the historic, ancient egypt, where organs were 'weighted' - and that the last time i had seen it, was in the movie repo men ^^ > [P-:] //wiki/Repo_Man_(film)
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    You missed an option C: forgive the debt (like default but less consequences) but keep companies and people accountable for externalities with really tight control.

Ya, and neither were completely his fault. However, I do fault him for juicing a good economy when stimulus would be more effective during a downturn when not wasted during upturns. Save in good times, spend in bad would do a lot for stability. 2008 could have been handled much better if he was disciplined enough during the recovery in between (besides, taking more money out of the system would have acted against bubbles). In contrast, the Clinton surplus going into the dotcom bust made it much easier to deal with. Trump is making similar mistakes, and if a problem occurs on his watch, he is going to have fewer tools to deal with it (and pressuring the Fed to cut rates during a boom is unforgivable). Unfortunately, Americans seem to neither want taxes to go up or interest rates to rise in good times so they can go down in bad. They just want them to go down all the time. So we are the most at fault after all.

autokad 7y ago
people forget Bush was fighting an energy recession, and those were a godsend to many. my brother used the money to apply for college and buy books to give college a go and see how it is, he's an MD now. I disagreed with almost everything Bush did, but that was not one of them. The same is true for Trump, in the sense had it not been for the Trump tax cuts, we would be in a recession right now.
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
  How, praytell would we be in a recession right now if not for tax cuts that barely made an impact for the vast majority of Americans? The economy was good when he took it over and despite everything he's trying to do to destroy it, it seems to be getting to the point of overheating. His tariffs will cool that though as people being to feel a 20% increase in all of the good that they buy and people start losing work because there's no one able to buy. Don't forget the record highs right before the last recession. Corporate debt is at unsustainable amounts and we have to pay for our debt at some point. Money doesn't just continue to come from nothing. While I don't disagree with everything he's done, President Trump has caused lasting damage to our economy, our country, and our status in the world that will take generations to fix, if the country survives that long. We seem to be at a point where a rock and a hard place have met, that only bloodshed or external conflict will remedy. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
- aaronbrethorst 7y ago
  A year later, it’s very clear that the tax cuts boosted gross domestic product and jobs a bit — and just for one year. Its effects are fading as U.S. GDP growth appears likely to weaken in 2019. The only thing that “rocked” were corporate profits and the stock market. And we’re facing trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-official-the-trump-tax-cuts-were-a-bust-2019-01-30 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-official-the-trump-tax...
  - autokad 7y ago
    that doesn't conflict with anything i said.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
The problem with "save in good times, spend in bad" is that people don't actually save in good times. Even if you raise interest rates, people will still borrow money when times are good because that's when there's profit to be made by investing the borrowed money. They do it less when rates are higher, but they still do it. The "problem" with the natural cycle is that in bad times people start to default on their debts, which would otherwise cause banks to raise rates to account for the higher risk, which would cause even more defaults. By central banks lowering rates at those times you prevent that from happening, but at the cost of ballooning everyone's debt out of control. Because then people affected by the downturn can borrow even more money at the low rates. So we borrow in good times and borrow even more in bad times. Real debt per capita has been increasing for decades, which obviously isn't sustainable. But that's what Keynesianism does -- it defers a crash by allowing otherwise uncreditworthy people to take on additional debt rather than filing for bankruptcy, but nobody ever pays the debt back. Now the problem is times are good except that everybody has too much debt, which is only fine because interest rates are low. Raise them and everything falls apart as the money people are currently using to buy stuff and live their lives is suddenly required to make interest payments on existing debt. What we need at this point is for people to pay off their debts. But they can't, because the money they borrowed is now inside corporations that never spend it. So we need to either find a way for that money to get out of corporations and back into the hands of regular people (without crashing the stock market), or print a bunch of new money that isn't derived from debt and give that to regular people so they can use that to pay back their debts with.
- 2reach1 7y ago
  > 'What we need at this point is people paying off their debt!' Debt... ('contextless OT) ...shortage... damn! Just for a second i remembered a picture of the historic, ancient egypt, where organs were 'weighted' - and that the last time i had seen it, was in the movie repo men ^^ > [P-:] //wiki/Repo_Man_(film)
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  You missed an option C: forgive the debt (like default but less consequences) but keep companies and people accountable for externalities with really tight control.