Hopefully I won´t have to write (or think!) about the disaster of the Bush presidency very much longer.
The absence of GW from the presidential campaign of McCain and Palin says more than enough.
And now the disaster with the banks and Wall Street: the same kind of incompetence that characterizes the war in Iraq, combined with the lack of leadership that shows an understanding of the facts and a capability to deal with them properly. Just read this incoherent answer of GW to a question from a reporter (here is the whole press conference):
At first I thought we could deal with this -- deal with the problem one issue at a time. We made the decision on Fannie and Freddie because there was systemic risk to our mortgage markets. And then obviously AIG came along -- and Lehman came along and it was -- it declared bankruptcy; then AIG came along and it -- the house of cards was much bigger, beyond -- started to stretch beyond just Wall Street, in the sense of the effects of failure. And so when one card started to go, we were worried about the whole deck going down, and so therefore moved, and moved hard.
And now the proposed solution: abandon the principles of a free capitalistic society and put the financial power in the hands of the government, and, in reality, one man: the Secretary of the Treasury.
Fortunately it seems that some Senators - Republican and Democrat - are desiring to think twice about this plan.
"This is what I love about this whole thing. This is what Congress said today. 'The days of getting money just for the asking are over.' And then they asked for $700 billion. See, you know the way a bailout works? Here's the way a bailout works. A failed president and a failed Congress invest $700 billion of your money in failed businesses. Believe me, this can't fail." --Jay Leno
"As if all this news is not bad enough, today, President Bush announced he's on the case. Because if there's one name that comes to mind when you're in a no-room-for-error crisis, it's George Bush." --Bill Maher
"Oh, and he is pissed about the trillion dollar thing. Usually, when he spends that kind of money on a country, he gets to bomb the shit out of it, too." --Bill Maher
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I find it interesting that everyone blames Bush's leadership and Republican policies for the economic downfall, when it was the Clinton administration who began pushing for more lenient lending to "lower income" (translate: unqualified) buyers, and the dems who pushed those policies through Congress. Republicans back in early 2000's fought the dems on this, yet the dems would not budge, and ignored outright predictions of this causing a need for a bailout. If you'd like to hear the dems pushing our economy into downfall in their own words, watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs
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