As the Obama team prepares to take on the shit sandwich handed to them by the most inept President of our time, there seems to be a bit of eye rolling and finger pointing from the peanut gallery in Washington regarding his picks for top posts in the new White House.
President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday defended his decision to choose veterans of the Clinton administration for positions in the West Wing, in his cabinet and across the administration, saying Americans would be rightly “troubled” if he overlooked experience merely to create the perception of change.
Mr. Obama, who created his presidential campaign around a message of bringing a fresh outlook to the problems of Washington, said he would be careless if he didn’t enlist people who had counseled former presidents. He grew animated as he tried to brush aside suggestions “that there’s a recycling of people who were in the Clinton administration.”
What I think people fail to remember is that we lived pretty good during the Clinton years. Now, many would have you believe that Reagan policies implemented years before Clinton ever dreamed of chasing Monica Lewinsky around the Oval would have as much to do with Clinton’s economy as he did. And there may very well be some truth to that, but as we have seen with Bush 43 it doesn’t take long to ruin a country, so I have to give most of the credit to Clinton. But there’s something else that makes the Obama picks worthwhile, and it might even be the very reason that everyone is complaining about.
Failure!
If I were elected President and wanted to implement change, I would absolutely bring on people that have made their bones in previous administrations by failing. Not in the Peter Principle kind of way, but by knowing through experience that sometimes the only winning move is not to play. That kind of experience can’t be taught, it can only be learned and I would much rather have had school in session during someone else’s presidency.
Obama is a smart guy and he knows what he is doing. He is going to give the Clintons enough rope to hang each other, not him. As far as the rest of the team, the President-elect has yet to come across as the guy that couldn’t make up his mind. If anyone on his team doesn’t serve at the pleasure of this President then they will have shorter careers than that Pope that got poisoned!
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Clinton benefitted from the deadlock with the congress that thwarted most of his plans. If he’d gotten his way on socialized medicine, for example, we’d have another trillion bucks a year in government spending to deal with today.
I love it when someone calls trying to take care of our own socialized medicine.
Using that logic, let’s just keep Bush in since everything he did was a failure.
As for socialized medicine, I would much rather see my tax dollars go to killing and bombing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis than take care of our own.
I mean, really…
(MAJOR snark at your earlier commenter)
Funny BuelahMan, a trillion bucks used to be a lot of money. Now we throw them around as if they were billion dollar bills! Hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving!
Sometimes, I feel sorry for him… He was elected to clear some serious shit that some other people have left behind.
@Singapore Recession-Thanks for stopping by. While most Presidents realize they are picking up after a previous administration, this one seems to be particularly messy!
I’m not 100% sure about this. While it is an improvement on the Bush administration the economic problems started with the Clinton administration.
Welcome Chris! This country never saw such a rate of expansion as we did under Clinton. His foreign policies left something to be desired but he did run a pretty good economy.
Robert: How do you measure this ‘rate of expansion’?
Through consumer consumption?
If so then that is seriously flawed. On the surface everyone is spending, but as a result of easy credit. Find out where this credit comes from and you’ll find the expansion is largely based on debt. Its not hard to create more jobs if you pump more money into the economy, but eventually that money has to be paid back, the debts get devalued through hyper-inflation or the country goes bankrupt.
Foreign holdings in U.S treasuries went from around 17% in 1993 (start of Clinton) to 30% in 2001 (end of Clinton). When Bush came in he had to keep that debt going up at an even quicker rate to maintain the current perception of growth.
Now that paints a frim picture of Clinton, but I can’t justify it entirely. While debt did go up, Clinton did a lot to slow down and eventually almost stop a trend that needed to be stopped. Bush ignited it again.
I was wrong to say the ecommoic problems started with Clinton, they started long before that.
I wasn’t 100% aware of what Clinton did with Fiscal policy and he actually made a lot of effort to reduce government spending to match government income, and actually reduced the growth of debt, almost stopping it.
He used tax cuts (supported by government spending cuts) to help encourage jobs, which was a great strategy. Also reducing the growth of debt, and almost stopping it was a great move. He was taking the country partly in the right direction.
However, there was still many problems he did not solve and allowed to get greater. He let the U.S grow its government debt with foreign countries hence letting the real wealth of other countries support U.S extragant spending, rather than putting it right.
He continued to let people’s personal savings diminish (from 8% in 1993 to 2% in 2001) encouraging them to spend and borrow through his monetary policies. This kept the housing price bubble growing and growing and is a massive cause of the ecomomic problem we have now.
He also allowed a massive stock bubble to develop with many sub-ponzi schemes likely going on in the background:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Comparison_of_three_stock_indices_after_1975.svg
Clinton also let trade deficits continue to explode as the U.S continued to slowly decline from a production and manufacturing economy to an unproductive service economy (hence the growth in foreign debt). The massive trade deficit increase started with Clinton: http://mwhodges.home.att.net/trade_all.gif
On the surface economy might have looked rosy but underlying fundamental causes for the current economic disaster which is far from over got worse under Clinton.
Looking at reserves as a sign of econmic growth USA has been stagnant since 1992: http://mwhodges.home.att.net/restrend.gif
In my opinion the boom you talk of was a false boom, just as the falicy that America is a rich country is false. America is the biggest debt nation in the world, it is not rich, nor was it getting richer when Clinton was in power, it was getting poorer.
Clinton also let the current monetary policies exist such as Fractional Reserve Banking, the existance of the Federal Reserve etc. to continue. These are underlying causes to many of the economic problems we are now facing.
So to sum up Clinton was miles better than Bush and did good for the economy in some ways beginning to point some aspects in the right direction, but if you look deep he did not tackle some of the major underlying problems, and in fact let them get a lot worse.
This meant as soon as he was out it was easy for all his work to be undone in an instant, and it was. Mainly due to Bush’s policies, but also because the econmy was no where near as good as you may have beleived. The bubble was simply not revealed for what it was when Clinton was in power, it was revealed while Bush was in power. Bush just made it a lot lot worse.
Obama needs a team that will create drastic change that cannot be undone to solve the underlying causes that the U.S faces. I’m not 100% convinced members of the Clinton administration are the right people for that. I agree its an improvement, but think a more radical change might be needed.
We can only tell by the actions that Obama and his team take in the coming years.
Chris-Thanks for taking the time to go on quit a riff here. Couple points I want to address:
“On the surface everyone is spending, but as a result of easy credit. Find out where this credit comes from and you’ll find the expansion is largely based on debt.”
On the surface deficient spending (whether governments or households) is bad. It’s only bad when either get over their heads. Besides, we are living in an economy where credit has litteraly siezed up, is there any business getting done?
Point is, you need the ability to use someone else’s money to build that factory, to add a new product line, to hire new people. Debt consumption isn’t a dirty word. It’s how it’s used.
“I wasn’t 100% aware of what Clinton did with Fiscal policy and he actually made a lot of effort to reduce government spending to match government income, and actually reduced the growth of debt, almost stopping it.
Clinton also let the current monetary policies exist such as Fractional Reserve Banking, the existance of the Federal Reserve etc. to continue. These are underlying causes to many of the economic problems we are now facing.”
Chris are you serious here? Was he supposed to abolish the Fed? Besides, sometimes you have to listen to the people in the room…Greenspan owns that mess! If you remember Clinton was almost a Republican when it came to government spending. He was very proactive on cutting waste.
“This meant as soon as he was out it was easy for all his work to be undone in an instant, and it was. Mainly due to Bush’s policies, but also because the econmy was no where near as good as you may have beleived. The bubble was simply not revealed for what it was when Clinton was in power, it was revealed while Bush was in power. Bush just made it a lot lot worse.”
I will grant you that having to pay for a war on terror eight months into office will put a hurting on any budget but each President is responsible for the growth and the decline of the country on their watch. If for no other reason than it can’t go any higher!
At the end of the day Chris, I lived better under Clinton than I did Bush. And that is the way many Americans voted this election cycle as well. I do appreciate the debate my friend!
“Chris are you serious here? Was he supposed to abolish the Fed? Besides, sometimes you have to listen to the people in the room…Greenspan owns that mess!”
Maybe not abolish it (I’d like that but have to realistic) but take steps to reduce their power and influence. Yes it was Greenspan who made a big mess, but a president should rightfully have the power to stop it and act in the interest of the people. He let it happen.
“Point is, you need the ability to use someone else’s money to build that factory, to add a new product line, to hire new people. Debt consumption isn’t a dirty word. It’s how it’s used.”
Exactly! And where wss it used? Not in the factory or production line like you suggest. It was blown on consumption and services by the consumer. The government did not spend it on production or manufacturing either hence the increasing deficit and loss of real wealth.
“At the end of the day Chris, I lived better under Clinton than I did Bush. And that is the way many Americans voted this election cycle as well.”
The question is why? I fully agree Clinton is better than Bush, but the reason you lived better was easy credit while the USA produced less and got more in debt. Bush just took that system even further and made the eventual collapse sooner rather than later.
Too easy credit means people are spending more, and everyone is earning more. Life is better. But eventually that bubble bursts as it is beginning too now. Clinton greatly assisted the growth of that Bubble. Bush just blew it up as fast as he could.
You cannot deny that the bubble grew during Clinton years, therefore he contributed to the mess, just not as much as Bush and others before him. The growth in trade deficit, the growth in foreign debt, the destruction of savings, share price bubbles, quick house price increases. This all happend under Clinton (as well as other presidents) and contributed to the mess the U.S is in now.
Like a family that borrows loads of money they will have a great lifestyle for some time, but eventually the debt has to be repaid and because they lived beyond their means they go bankrupt when the bubble bursts. The longer it goes on for, the bigger the bubble, the harder the crash and liklihood of complete meltdown.
America has lived beyond its means and Clinton encouraged that to happen in many ways so it looked like he had a great economy on the surface. And people think that he did great.
The reason it didn’t look so good for Bush is he also doesn’t give a damn about people so the debt was increasingly used to service the rich than the poor and more aggresive foreign policies.
The current bailouts are just keeping that bubble alive, and massively increasing debt. The bigger the debt the bigger the eventual fall.
If you want another Clinton to keep the bubble growing so you can live just as good as you did in the 1990s then be prepared for an even bigger crash.
What advice would you give to a family hooked on debt? Sensible answer is get them to cut back, repay the debt and regrow their lives. But if that family is addicted to debt they will continue until creditors eventually stop lending and they suffer a variety of possible detrimental outcomes and ultimately they become very very poor and have to re-start.
The U.S.A is addicted to debt. Either Obama can wake the country up and take gradual steps to rebuild the USA to its former productive and rich status and reduce and eventally eliminate the dependance on debt. Or he can let America continue like the addicted debt ridden family and cause an eventual massive collapse.
Personally I think the collapse is inevitable in the very short term (2-5 years). All that can be done is reduce the pain of the collapse.
Enjoying the debate
You know what I got through all that? You don’t like the Clintons. Am I wrong?
“If you want another Clinton to keep the bubble growing so you can live just as good as you did in the 1990s then be prepared for an even bigger crash.”
You could have just come out and said that!
Hey Folks,
Ending the Fed is necessary. Having a gold standard backed currency is a necessary.
Clinton, did start a mess with NAFTA and the bogus trade agreements that cost us jobs, along with the lax Tax laws that allowed the companies to do it. He also continued the slide of deregulation of the banking system, only to be escalated under the Bush cabal.
Bush’s tax cuts to to rich hurried the death march, but it was already marching. Just more slowly into oblivion.
But the thing that has ruined America? The bloated and gorged Military Industrial Complex. No one talks about the elephant in the room, but me. I suppose.
The war on terror, Homeland security, etc, etc, etc is based off this monstrosity and it needs to be taken down.
Best way… to totally eliminate the need for oil as a fuel. And prosecute the neocon criminals who have done to America (and the rest of the world) what has been done… Imperialisation.
“You know what I got through all that? You don’t like the Clintons. Am I wrong?”
No I am just concerned that the underlying problem won’t be addressed so the econmic problem just gets worse to benefit certain stakeholder (not the general public).
I think there’s a lot about what the Clinton’s did that was great. Maybe their experience and vision will help in many ways.
However, when it comes to the economy I don’t think they have what it takes to solve and soften the blow of this current crisis, as their past actions actually helped cause it.
It is not a question of liking. It is a question of policy. I don’t care about the names. I just care about the actions. To change the current system there needs to be a massive shakeup. The more that comes to light about Obama’s team, the less real change I see.
I also mostly agree with BuelahMan.
@BuelahMan-Having something tied to our currency would prevent us from printing as much as we wanted in the middle of the night. How else could we continue to throw useless dollars down the rabbit hole?
As far as the MIC-Maybe it needs to be refashioned but it is not going away. In fact, it is needed, modified, but needed. You watch what Obama does to the budget. He is going to carve up all the bullshit spending within the first 12 months.
@Chris-And as for you my friend. “However, when it comes to the economy I don’t think they have what it takes to solve and soften the blow of this current crisis, as their past actions actually helped cause it.”
Good thing they didn’t make her Treasury Secretary!!
Seriously, I have never heard the things come out of a President like I have this guy. I really do think we have ourselves a winner and I for one will give my full-throated support…until he pisses me off! 