Well, actually, that was a false prosperity fed with funny money by the Fed gargoyles, Alan Greenspan and "Helicopter Ben" Bernanke. I think it's a fair ding -- the manufacturing base, the engine of our real prosperity, continued to go away during the Bush years with no attempt on his or congressional Republicans' (or Democrats') part to slow or arrest the financial trend toward disinvestment and cheesy, leveraged ripoff deals.
The prosperity, such as it was, of 2000-2008 was a sort of afterglow of the 80's and 90's bull -- the Reagan bull -- and the buzzards were already circling by 2000, the markets descending for a year before Shrub was sworn in.
If you want a bad guy for all this, look at the guys who went crazy bundling bad debt and default swaps. That's what wrecked everybody. Jamie Dimon, AIG, the guys at Bank of America and Citigroup and Merrill Lynch. (Who's back, btw, with their classically absurd "mighty steer" commercials. Yeah, I want market advice from a company that ruptured itself gorging on bad debt and derivatives.)
“If you want a bad guy for all this, look at the guys who went crazy bundling bad debt and default swaps.’
As I understand it, this was mandated by Dim congressional action, even back in the Clinton years, and brought to full fruition by Barney Frank, as a means to give an equal opportunity for all to own homes, even the unqualified.
Don’t forget to add that he released the oil in the federal oil reserve (meant to be stockpiled in case of war or national emergency) and flooded the market with cheap oil. This stimulated the economy at the expense of national security.
I don’t know the aftermath, but I will bet it was replenished under Bush, which would have been a drag on the economy during his Presidency.