Many assume that George W. Bush’s legacy will be determined by how history judges the Iraq War, but The Politico points out that the past week brings to mind another possibility:
President Bush has long assumed the outcome of the Iraq war would define his legacy. But the catastrophic collapse of the housing bubble on his watch provides a new, perhaps more ominous, threat to how his stewardship will be ranked in history.
In a matter of weeks, an investment banking industry that survived the Civil War and the Great Depression virtually vanished from the scene, weighed down by faulty mortgages and other debts.
The Federal Reserve Board’s role in the economy has been transformed in ways even economists say they can’t yet fully appreciate, save for one: The government now has a dramatically bigger presence in the private market.
And the U.S. taxpayers are now likely to be put on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars of faulty mortgages and already have become part-owners of a giant insurance house scheduled to be carved up and sold by the next administration.
“Bush runs a real danger of going down as a Herbert Hoover in this scenario,” said Beverly Gage, a presidential historian at Yale University. “He could be seen as the man held responsible for what is happening who stood by and didn’t forge a clear direction at a moment when a clear direction is what was needed.”
The irony, of course, is that, like Hoover in the period after the 1929 Stock Market Crash, George Bush may be remembered as a President who stood by and did nothing while the financial system collapsed. Reality, of course, is quite different, and the idea that the Bush Administration has adhered to free market principles when it comes to the financial markets is laughable at best.
September 19th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
There is a deeper irony here. Hoover, the fellow who “stood by and did nothing,” actually caused further damage with a dramatic income tax increase and the great tariff disaster of Smoot-Hawley.
September 21st, 2008 at 2:32 pm
[...] Below the Beltway derides the Bush administration for not adhering to free market principles (see here) [...]
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:14 am
Something I hope we’re all doing this morning…
Dear [congressperson]
Please do not rubber-stamp the biggest swindle in the history of the world. Vote against the Bush $700bil bailout.
One of the proper functions of government is to protect the citizens from those who would do them violence, be it physical or economic. This bailout is the most obvious, blatant attempt at transfer of wealth from the taxpayers to private corporations ever perpetrated. Again, please vote AGAINST this bailout.