Mona Charen had it right this morning on Bill Bennett’s show. The GOP never fought back against the meme that Bush ruined the economy in 2007 and 2008 and most people believe it. Even though it was a 2006 democrat Congress led by Frank and Dodd that caused the housing bubble which burst to threaten our financial system. Bush’s economy was 5.5% unemployment and 3.5% growth before that election. This is the BIG LIE in politics today and the media trumpets it still...that Bush ruined the economy. That’s why Willard can’t get any traction against the “failed policies of the past” propaganda.
It goes back to the 90's and the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which took the lid off the investment banks, and to the invention of credit default swaps, CDS's, which much more than the housing bubble broke the big investment banks when Lehman Bros. fell.
Big money-center banks gorged on CDS's, in the scores of trillions of dollars. Then the whole thing went under when Lehman Bros. failed and AIG, the principal insuring company of the CDS's, failed too -- when some Lehman CDS's crossed in the open market at 20 cents on the dollar, AIG was instantaneously broke, and all their client investment and money-center banks with them.
Smaller banks, invested in real estate instead, weren't so badly hurt (except the ones that had gorged on Freddie and Fannie stuff, which Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama shared blame for). But the Fed rushed to save the biggest, brokest banks .... and in so doing, have prolonged our misery.
Now we're going to have a Japanese-style workout, that Alan Gargoyle once scolded the Japanese for doing, which will last decades and depress the U.S. economy for as far as the eye can see.
Many, many authors of all this, folks. Including two Fed chairmen, three Presidents, and whole roomsful of congresscritters and bank executives.
Bingo. Bush wouldn’t defend bush and romney won’t either. We aLl know it is more complex that that but for all his faults bush did not ruin the economy. It was imperfect but there are degrees of bad and it was nothing like what we face today.
They have to do 2 things
- contrast obama’s reign to bush’s and others and directly tie obama’s idealogy to the poor results
- sell how a pro growth platform will create jobs
Romney makes it sound like obama is a good guy but just tried and failed. He refuses to take on his failed idealogy as the root problem