Posted on 11/12/2009 1:34:23 PM PST by STARWISE
Former President George W. Bush, in his first open-to-the press appearance, said that as the world's economies recover, they should resist the temptation to replace free markets with government spending.
Bush said he acted to funnel billions to banks because of a crisis situation. His action, he said, prevented a worldwide Depression.
(Full quotes to come.)
*** UPDATE *** NBC's Andrew Gross adds Bush's quotes:
"The decision last fall was one of the most difficult of my presidency," Bush said in a speech on his vision for his presidential institute at Southern Methodist University.
"I went against my free-market instincts and approved a temporary government intervention to unfreeze the credit markets so that we could avoid a major global Depression.
"As the world recovers, we are going to face a temptation to replace the risk-and-reward model of the private sector with the blunt instruments of government spending and control.
History shows that the greater threat to prosperity is not too little government involvement, but too much."
Bush has also agreed to a University of Virginia project that will examine his presidency over the next five years. Bush and other administration officials will be interviewed.
(Excerpt) Read more at firstread.msnbc.msn.com ...
Note and remember that Pres. Bush states above for the NTH time ... and as was confirmed in later revelations .. that Bernanke and Paulson urgently confronted him with the news that if he didn't give this temporary infusion of liquidity immediately, there would be a depression worse than the Great Depression of the 30's.
God bless Pres. George W. Bush .. miss ya more than ever.
~~PING!
I definitely had my issues with Bush but it was nice to hear him speak. There was none of the angry rhetoric directed at Americans they way Zero does.
Did GWB appoint Bernanke and Paulson?
Regrettably, yes.
W,I still love ya! Wish u were back in the white house.
Note to BDS’ers, pretending he didn’t double the size of the Department of Education, fund the senior presciption drug benefit, steal billions from taxpayers for Africa to fight aids and attempt to appoint two liberals to the SCOTUS amoung other leftist deeds is no different than the BDS’ers on the left, it is still not seeing the truth about his leftist RINO streak. Who can forget him telling voters that Arlen was a good conservative?
But God bless him in his treatment of our troops and his leadership on and after 9/11.
Oh .. I guess you forgot that every president
appoints specific experts to whom he delegates
issues in their respective fields, as presidents
obviously do not and could not possibly possess
expertise in all the many departments of government.
I shall never forgive him.
Awww ... I’m sure yours is the only
accurate opinion and that he’ll be
so sad to hear that you, the brilliant
you, hold this opinion.
I miss the days where American and Israeli National Security were of great importance to the White House.
It was clear by September 2007 to anybody paying attention that Bernanke and Paulson even more so were pathological, serial liars. He’s to blame for the first trillion down the drain.
Yes, there are many Bush did that none of us should agree with. But he was unwavering in our war against those that killed thousands of us on 9-11-01. We can’t say the same for our current ‘Ditherer in Chief.’
At least Bush doesn’t go overseas and diss us like Obozo does. At least Bush loves his country. At least Bush doesn’t wait forever to send what the generals asked for. At least Bush would never surrender to the enemy.
IRC the medicare prescription drug program has come in under projections in cost to gov’t.
Replay of the speech today by Pres. George W. Bush and Laura Bush on the new George W. Bush Center @ SMU in Dallas, TX
“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system”
Actually, he abandoned free-market principles to save our financial system, which is about as far from a free-markiet as you can get without wearing gray suits and chanting nice things about your Dear Leader. The government stepped in to salvage the government system, which will no doubt fail again at some time in the near future, at which time the government will step in to save itself once again, ad infinitum.
I believe he was ill advised and he and his big-spending Republican cohorts in Congress helped pave the road for Obama and his big-spending Democrat cohorts who are inarguably worse.
The No Child Left Behind bill finally put some teeth of accountability into a program that was already there.
Which two liberals did he nominate for the SC?
I sometimes fault him and Karl Rove for trying to make government work better rather than trying to shrink it. Their reasoning was they could not, under the political circumstances, cut the programs or departments but they could at least try to make them work better.
Whether they were right or wrong it turned some conservatives against them. It sounds as if you are one of them.
I am glad he is speaking out.
Oh and somewhere in my posting history, I recently pondered that very statement, as something more historically and strategically valuable than we initially gave him credit (ha, ha) for.
One thing for sure...it has brought “them” out of the woodwork and we can clearly see the whites of their eyes.
Name them.
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