Barrel Strength

With Congress in school and Presidency in an on-the-job-training program US is in great hands indeed.

Update: Reason magazine notes that Waters has been a member of the House Committee on Financial Services since 1990!  Twenty years and she is still clueless.

The former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, holder of the prestigious title of Master of Bubble Administration (MBA), who was widely lauded as an Oracle in the 1990s and was honoured with a fawning cover story in the perpetually naive Time magazine, has finally met his legacy.  Hillary Rodham Clinton highlighted the US deficit as a security issue and shared the following comments regarding Greenspan.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday said “outrageous” advice from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan helped create record U.S. budget deficits that put national security at risk…

“I served on the budget committee in the Senate, and I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday when we had a hearing in which Alan Greenspan came and justified increasing spending and cutting taxes, saying that we didn’t really need to pay down the debt — outrageous in my view,” she said…

Clinton’s swipe at Greenspan symbolized the way the former central bank chief’s reputation has fallen since he left the job in 2006.

First named to the office by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, Greenspan served throughout the presidency of Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton. He was regarded as economic oracle whose cryptic pronouncements were searched for inner meaning and regularly moved financial markets.

Now, he has become a handy whipping boy blamed for helping inflate a housing bubble that eventually burst, setting off a grave financial crisis and plunging the economy into the worst recession in decades.

Very conveniently Hillary, she of the ever shifting last name, did not include the Internet bubble in the list of Greenspan’s “accomplishments”, but then she wouldn’t want to further tarnish the legacy of her husband on whose watch this bubble was inflated and eventually deflated with tech stocks peaking in March 2000.  This was seven months before Bush Jr. was elected and by the time he was sworn in the tech stocks, as measured by NASDAQ index, had already fallen by more than 50%.

The health dog-and-pony show has been widely declared a draw and given that it required skills other than campaigning skills, the outcome is not a surprise.  On the election campaign front, Obama continues to rack up wins and those who cross his path continue to suffer.

In September 2009 NY Gov. Paterson rejected WH entreaties not to run for reelection.  Eventually he learned the hard way not to mess with Chicago political crowd.  Earlier this week NYT dug up dirt and revealed that Paterson and state police officials contacted the woman who had accused David Johnson, an aide to the governor, of attacking her last year.  It finally forced Paterson to announce today that he will not seek reelection.

Obama is still a winner – when he is in his element.