Clinton's Rose Colored Glasses

Former President Bill Clinton was back in the game last night doing what he does best. "Slick Willie" used his very formidable political skills to wow the raucous crowd at the Democratic National Commission.  In a very entertaining nearly hour long speech, Clinton attempted to make the case for a second President Obama term. Although Clinton's speech was very effective he- like all politicians do-engaged in a bit of revisionist history by carefully omitting his stumbles during his two term presidency. Clinton stated that "in the last 29 months, our economy has produced about 4 1/2 million private sector jobs".  This figure has been debunked by CNN among other fact checking websites. This blogger was particularly disturbed at this gem: "They want to get rid of those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and prohibit future bailouts". I wish that our doggedly determined media would remind the Former President that those preventative regulations he speaks of were signed by him! In 1999 Clinton signed the Graham-Leach Bliley Act which repealed the depression era Glass Steagal Act, a law that among other things prevented commercial banks from engaging in investment banking.

In 2000 Clinton also signed another major piece of deregulation : The commodity Futures Modernization Act which prevented banks from engaging in risky speculation-such as the notorious Credit default Swaps. CDS are largely blamed by many economist for precipitating the financial crisis. Mr. Clinton also painted a completely rosy picture of the economy during his second term when in fact a major economic storm was brewing. Clinton left office in January 2001 just before the tech bubble burst which tanked the stock market bringing to an end the famous "irrational exuberance" era- a phrase coined by Clinton's former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. By March of that same year we were in a full blown recession-which Bush  subsequently inherited( there's that word again). President bush actually behaved like a President and never blamed his predecessor for his problems-some people should have learned from this. This wasn't the first time Bill Clinton had to come out of the bullpen to rescue the "Hope Pope". In 2010 he showed up unexpectedly with Obama at a White House press briefing to explain the Presidents tax compromise with the Republicans. Some bad news for The President: Clinton can't help him in November.





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