Bush speaks on the economy:
Explaining the current economic downturn to a closed-door fundraiser last week, President Bush said, "Wall Street got drunk."
"There's no question about it," Bush said. "Wall Street got drunk, that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras. It got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments."
Huh? What does this mean? "Wall Street got drunk" is a metaphor. So what exactly is this man saying? Who knows? Does he know? I doubt it.
What exactly is wrong with "fancy financial instruments"?
The implication of Bush's statement, which he is too stupid to understand, is that the market failed because there's just something wrong with capitalism. And the logical implication from there is that we need more government regulation of Wall Street. No, of course Bush didn't say this; he never thinks out the logical implications of his statements. He just speaks, like his favorite political philosopher, in woozy metaphors that can mean anything.
Bush's statement indicates that he has learned nothing in his Presidency. He does not understand what a disaster it has been.
As Mises and the Austrian economists taught us, boom and bust cycles result from distortions in the economy caused by government intervention. When government printing presses create credit expansion, eventually some bad things will happen. But Bush doesn't give a damn about that because he oversaw a boom as he sent inflation through the roof to fund his Presidency -- and the next guy will have to worry about the bust.
So if Wall Street got drunk, it's because the Bush administration kept serving drinks on the house -- long after closing time.
For Bush to criticize Wall Street is like, to use another analogy, a pusher pointing to a bunch of addicts and saying, "Look at those junkies. Disgusting! Why don't they live a clean life?"
What American freedom we still have has survived much in the last two centuries, but I don't think it can survive another moron in the White House.
UPDATE: Wolfgang, a German blogger, translates a few passages from this post into German. It's the first time I've read my words translated into a foreign language -- a minor thrill, but a thrill nonetheless. Thank you, Wolfgang!
6 comments:
The junkie metaphor only falls short insomuch as junkies have a choice. Bush's inflation was forced on the market whether any of us like it or not.
So really his statement is much more awful than even that!
Is there a non-moron in the running?
Bush thinks he's a part-time comedian.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121677050160675397.html
Here is what is really going on.
"The abiding lesson here is what happens when you combine private profit with government power. You create political monsters that are protected both by journalists on the left and pseudo-capitalists on Wall Street, by liberal Democrats and country-club Republicans. Even now, after all of their dishonesty and failure, Fannie and Freddie could emerge from this taxpayer rescue more powerful than ever."
Nice continuation of Bonehead Bush's analogy: Bush is the one serving the drinks.
As for whether the country can survive another moron like Bush, as much as I detest him, I think it can. We had Richard Nixon, after all, and survived him, although the result was the malaise of the 1970s.
Regardless, Bush has caused real damage. When one of the only meaningful achievements of his eight years in office -- his tax cuts -- expires in a couple years, all that will be left is the wreckage of his "compassionate," wrongheaded, ignorant, passive, and evasive policies.
One could recite a list of them. The one that I fear the most is his complete cave-in on terrorism, with the result that nuclear-armed North Korea has nukes to sell, and Iran keeps marching ahead toward development of The Bomb. As someone who lives about two miles from Ground Zero, and simply as an American, that makes me none too happy.
All the comments so far I agree with! The most outrageous thing about Bush's cave-in to terrorism is that since he talked tough, what the left derides as his "manicheanism" -- either your with us or you're not, axis of evil -- when we get hit again the left and the MSM will conclude that the problem was Bush was too tough and did not appease enough!
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