Steve Forbes blasts Bush’s weak dollar policy
Steve Forbes has been saying this for years. The Bush administration’s failure to aggressively support the dollar has created serious economic problems.
The dumbest, most destructive economic policy of the Bush Administration has been its weak-dollar position–letting the dollar slide in value against the euro, the yen, the pound and gold. The repeatedly disproved theory in operation here is that cheapening your currency will improve your trade balance and that an improved trade balance makes your economy stronger and wealthier. Put aside the meaninglessness of the trade balance as a measure of economic health or sickness–the U.S., after all, has had a trade deficit with the rest of the world for 350 years out of the last 400. A weak-currency policy has disastrous economic and political consequences–most immediately, our tumultuous equity markets.
The entire article is worth reading. He even acknowledges that Clinton deserves credit for his strong-dollar policy.
Posted in: Conservatives, Economy, Republicans, Trade
Tags: Conservatives, Economy, Republicans, Trade
Can we get Bill and Mr. Cohen back in office for a couple of years so we can fix this economy?
It’s amazing how much damage Bush has done.
it will someday make a great micro economics book if someone did an analysis of Bush policy and tied it to its economic impacts.
We can call the book, Bush’s Misery Index
The first and most obvious impact is the bellweather of any misery index, and that is oil prices. Pretty easy to trace that nearly 500% rise in petrol during the Bush era to his policy. No brainer
Next we could follow step by step the many Bush policies that resulted in the 50% devaluation of the US Dolllar. Add on top of that the ignorance of the Bushies as to how our political relations with “old Europe” can affect our trade relations
Then let’s look at the culture of less government and laissez faire regulation and we might be able to understand how subprime debt got labelled as a low risk investment and nobody in government had anything to say about it. Then you can tie that to numerous cases of misery.
and it’s only going to get worse… We have a stack up of bad economics that is all coming to one giant thud and Bush’s ultimate wild card, his ability to close 20 billion dollar arms deals with the Saudi’s, is not going to save the day.
The laissez faire attitude is the same thing that happened under Reagan and Bush I regarding the Savings and Loan crisis.