On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 13:36:39 GMT, "Jim," wrote:


The comparison might be from 2001 (the first year of Bush when
everything went to hell). I'd like to see things compared to the last
year of Clinton when we were doing pretty good.

It was prosperity based on a lie.

During the last year of Clinton's administration, the bubble started
to burst. Clinton had no interest in regulating, or allowing the SEC
to regulate, the accounting practices which were being used to inflate
stock and bond prices. I present EBITDA - a useful tool to determine
the profitability of companies during the '80s. It morphed into an
accounting gimmick under the lax rule of the Clinton administration.

To wit: As part of EBITDA, companies were allowed to set a "value" on
brands and/or naming trade rights. Thus, something that was totally
ephemeral, was added to the bottom line instead of how much money was
taken in, how much product was sold. It inflated the value the
companies involved in the Tech Rally while influencing few of the Big
Board companies which were a little more circumspect in how they used
this new concept.

By mid-2000, this inflation was becoming highly apparent to money
managers who started pulling back slowly. By the Fall, the whole
thing was starting to fall apart and by the time the election rolled
around, the cracks in the bubble were becoming major fault lines.

As we all witnessed, the bubble burst leaving a lot of ruined
portfolios in it's wake. Add in the aberration of 911 and you have
all the influences available for Depression or worse.

It didn't happen because the economy is basically sound and working.

The economic "failure" of the Bush administration, viewed in
retrospect, can be directly laid at the feet of the Clinton
Administration. That is the way historians 50 years from now will
view it and that is the way it is.

I'm not a big Bush fan, but to blame him for something that wasn't his
fault isn't fair.

Later,

Tom

The economic "failure" of the Bush administration, viewed in
retrospect, can be directly laid at the feet of the Clinton
Administration. That is the way historians 50 years from now will
view it and that is the way it is.

Baloney. Clinton inherited a nation in debt, he paid off the debt and
the nation flourished. Now Dubya is digging the nation back into debt
because of a silly, unpopular and unproductive war, the dollar is
dropping like a rock against other currencies due to that debt and due
to our inbalance of trade, and the economy is teetering. Whoever is in
office after Dubya will have to clean up his mess.

"Juan" wrote in message
oups.com...
The economic "failure" of the Bush administration, viewed in
retrospect, can be directly laid at the feet of the Clinton
Administration. That is the way historians 50 years from now will
view it and that is the way it is.

Baloney. Clinton inherited a nation in debt, he paid off the debt and
the nation flourished.

If you really believe Clinton paid off the national debt.......you are
smoking better stuff than asslicker is growing at home.


Now Dubya is digging the nation back into debt
because of a silly, unpopular and unproductive war, the dollar is
dropping like a rock against other currencies due to that debt and due
to our inbalance of trade, and the economy is teetering. Whoever is in
office after Dubya will have to clean up his mess.

On 18 Feb 2005 10:05:15 -0800, "Juan" wrote:

Baloney. Clinton inherited a nation in debt, he paid off the debt and
the nation flourished.

No he did not. And the nation was hardly "flourshing" during his last
two years in office.

Clinton used a different accounting trick to say, during his second
term, that debt was being paid down because it was stretched over TEN
years - the surplus that Clinton and his economic team said existed,
never existed in real time - in the future, yes - at the time no. It
was the same as EBITDA - it never existed in reality. And he knew it,
economists knew it and Larry Summers Clinton's last Secretary of the
Treasury admitted it.

Here are some facts for you Jimmy Neutrons on the right and left.
This covers the Bush the Elder and Clinton economic policies.

Tax hikes failed to produce expected revenues. Income tax receipts
rose 18 percent slower rate with the taxes of the late '80s and '90s
than they did during the Regan era.

A 30 percent build-up in real federal nondefense spending. Federal
spending for civilian programs accounted for a larger share of GDP
than at any previous time in American history.

Runaway spending on Medicare, Medicaid and welfare. In constant
dollars Medicare spending grew by $75 billion or 73 percent, Medicaid
spending grew by $47 billion or 112 percent, and welfare spending
climbed by $93 billion or 72 percent.

A one-third decline in the military budget in the post-Cold War era.
Defense spending had a smaller share of the federal budget than at any
time in American history. Defense cutbacks of roughly $100 billion
helped camouflage the large nondefense spending increases in the
1990s.

Record high budget deficits in the 1990s.The nation's economy under
performed in the 1990s under Bush and Clinton relative to the 1980s.
Inflation was low, 3.6 percent, and unemployment was held in check at
6.4 percent. Other measures of economic health are far more
discouraging such as sluggish economic growth (1.8% vs 3.2% during the
Regan Era), slow job growth from 1989 to 1995 was 1.3% and the net was
a loss of 200,000 jobs and by 1995, real family income fell 5%.

And those are just the factual highlights. If you consider the other
aspects of Clinton's disregard for the economic facts of life in the
last part of his Presidency, he was just a continuation of the first
Bush's disastrous economic shepherding.

Flourished indeed.

~~ sheesh ~~

Later,

Tom