Missing A Key Part Of That Economic Legacy
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in 2008 | Free Trade | Hillary Clinton — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The Washington Post reports that Hillary Clinton has finally decided to embrace her husband's legacy in her run for the Presidency. Among the reasons for this earthshaking tactical decision is the following:
Obama has made challenging the 1990s a mainstay of his platform, saying it is time to "turn the page" on the partisanship -- and implicitly the scandals -- of the Clinton era. This is a major part of his case that he is the most electable Democrat, able to expand the electoral base to states where Hillary Clinton is still viewed as polarizing.
But the Clintons regard any discussion of the Nineties to be good for them, evoking memories of a booming economy and a time when the United States enjoyed greater popularity around the world.
And of course, Hillary Clinton wants to throw into the trash heap of history one of the major policy initiatives that helped bring about "a booming economy" and "greater popularity" for the United States; free trade. There are few more reliable routes to economic prosperity than trade liberalization and to Bill Clinton's credit, he recognized and acted on that fact when he was President.
Too bad both Clintons have backtracked from that stance in the effort to elect Hillary Clinton President. Power should never be achieved as a goal in and of itself. It should be achieved in the service of more noble efforts. Whether the Clintons have adopted their new trade stance because of expediency (the most likely possibility) or because they suddenly, genuinely believe in protectionism, their stance on trade does them no honor. And if implemented, it would do the country a lot of harm.
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From 60 Minutes:
Clinton was the only Democrat Greenspan served under, and he says he was the smartest. "Even though I clearly was a Republican, I had to admit he was an extraordinarily effective president," Greenspan says.
FROM GREENSPAN'S MEMOIR:
"The hard truth was that Reagan had borrowed from Clinton, and Clinton was having to pay it back. I was impressed that he did not seem to be trying to fudge reality to the extent politicians ordinarily do. He was forcing himself to live in the real world."
I worked for the federal govmint during the '90s. The Clinton economy was started by Bush 41. Clinton also denied or delayed our raises under the lame excuse of 'not good for the economy'. When I retired in 2006 one of my coworkers told me Reagan was the only other president to deny the federal workforce a raise. Bush 43 tried the same tactics but Congress is now much more fed friendly. Admitedly we didn't have a good reputation at times, but we were the best educated workforce at any shipyard in the country bar none. And that's West Coast shipyard. I worked under the new system which includes social security, so I am in now way one of your 'double dippers'.
when the clintons crow about the 90s economy- they obfuscate the fact that it was built on an absurd tech stock bubble. We'll see how bad the current real estate bubble turns out to be but as the name implies at least real estate has some inherent real value. The fact that the nasdaq was bid up to 5,000 is almost criminal, its still 40%+ off its high even 8 years later. An economy built on that kind of fraud is nothing to brag about.