One of the great things about the internet is that you can always look back. See the 5 star reviews for The Bush Boom: How a Misunderestimated President Fixed a Broken Economy. Pretty funny. Here's a sample:
Jeff and Larry have written a volume destined to stand alongside "The Hoover Miracle" and "Lyndon Johnson: Triumph in Vietnam". If you have to buy one book about a nonexistent phenonmenon this year, this is it. In the bizarro world there really is a Bush boom. But over there Larry Kudlow is a vegan with a ponytail delivering tofu pizzas for minimum wage.
That's a review which came out when the book was published in October of 2003, so this isn't second-guessing.
From the "editorial reviews" section:
Those who wish to debate economic policy on the basis of facts rather than opinion will find this book indispensable. -- Richard W. Rahn, Chairman of Novecon Financial and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute
Fantastic find.
2001: I was making $30k as an engineer for a small company
2008: I made $100k as an independent consultant doing web application development
2009: My rates had to remain the same to keep work with the bank I work at because they're too afraid to invest in the market with Obama talking trillion dollar spending bills, buying up mortgages, and nationalizing banks.
Difference, Bush stayed out of my pockets, Obama keeps taking from them to give it to people who can't actually afford the things they buy.
Yeah, I'll take a Bush boom over a Barack Bust any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
...ok. LOL.
"My rates had to remain the same to keep work with the bank I work at because they're too afraid to invest in the market with Obama talking trillion dollar spending bills, buying up mortgages, and nationalizing banks."
Uh, yeah. I'm sure their hesitancy to invest in has everything to do with Obama's policies (which includes bailing them out) and nothing to do with mass depreciation and foreclosure in the housing market.
"Difference, Bush stayed out of my pockets, Obama keeps taking from them to give it to people who can't actually afford the things they buy."
Yeah, like the banks themselves, who are getting an order of magnitude more of the TARP money than troubled homeowners.
Are you people even thinking about what your saying anymore?
"Yeah, I'll take a Bush boom over a Barack Bust any day of the week and twice on Sundays."
Except that this 'boom' later turns to be a thermonuclear explosion. At your backyard.
Brian Hines - awesome! Obama is a time traveler!
You do realise it's february, right? Right?
You are making the assumption that Brian is telling the truth about his income.
Bush was president for 8 years, most of that time the economy was pretty good by any measure. The few reforms he did try were pretty handily slapped down by the Dems.
Bush is a liberal, basically. He didn't really seem to mind much letting both his party and the Dems run wild. (The Repub's never were in a position to pass any reform, even had they wanted to. Not enough of a majority without Dem votes.)
A pox on both houses. I hate both corrupt and power-mad parties.
My rates had to remain the same to keep work with the bank I work at because they're too afraid to invest in the market with Obama talking trillion dollar spending bills, buying up mortgages, and nationalizing banks.
As my friend, who works in the financial sector, says: the capital is there, the investors are just too afraid to invest it.
You do realise(sic) it's february, right? Right?
you do realize that the people who do the investing are looking ahead? So it might be the calendar month of February '09 but the investor class is focused on mid-2010. So they started pulling back their capital in summer '08 as they knew Obama was clearly going to win and even if he did not McCain wasn't that much better.
I'm hoping Obama will learn the basics of how our economy works and stop throwing future money at every problem. But, I guess, he has to learn how many states are in the Union first.
That's a review which came out when the book was published in October of 2003, so this isn't second-guessing.
That's a review which came out when the book was published in October of 2003, so this isn't second-guessing.
Well, if just one of those reviews had presented any actual arguments instead of 30 different versions of the same snark, I'd be a little more impressed by their prescience. Those who hated Bush back then and sputtered contentless anti-Bush remarks ended up being right because he ended up being a disaster. Good for them. But without actual specific arguments behind these sputterings, there's really nothing to hang your hat on and still no reason to listen to the same people today.
So they started pulling back their capital in summer '08 as they knew Obama was clearly going to win and even if he did not McCain wasn't that much better.
the investor class are obviously morons. paying attention to politics instead of the economic fundamentals when they have such genius prescience about the future which they can leverage. (can you tell that i have an urge to laugh at people who explicitly nod to the future pricing of the moronic "efficient market"?d)
So they started pulling back their capital in summer '08 as they knew Obama was clearly going to win and even if he did not McCain wasn't that much better.
but the genius investor class wanted it! remember how the geniuses react when the bailout didn't pass?
Well, if just one of those reviews had presented any actual arguments instead of 30 different versions of the same snark, I'd be a little more impressed by their prescience. Those who hated Bush back then and sputtered contentless anti-Bush remarks ended up being right because he ended up being a disaster. Good for them. But without actual specific arguments behind these sputterings, there's really nothing to hang your hat on and still no reason to listen to the same people today.
true. i wish you had archives to go back to 2002 ziel ;-) they always make me feel better when people express wisdom.
i wish you had archives to go back to 2002 ziel.
Hah - I'm afraid if I did, they'd be awful embarrassing.
I think the single most embarrassing thing I've read in a blog - that seems to have gone completely unacknowledged since - was the Credit Snob post by Alex Tabarrok. It would be one thing to have called this so wrong 6 or 7 years ago, but this classic was just one year and eleven months ago today.
Discovery Institute? Intelligent Design economics? No thanks.
Yeah, I'll take a Bush boom over a Barack Bust any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
That's so em effing stupid that I can't think of anything to say.
Bush is a liberal, basically
Where do these people come from?
Clinton had a hand in this, but no one but a moron is blaming Obama. He got thrown a hot potato, and he's doing the best he can with it.