Monday, January 19, 2009

The Bush Legacy

A lot of people think that the financial crisis America faces today started before Bush, that the seeds of it were sown years ago. There is some truth to that. But really, it took on life after 9/11 when Bush told Americans to go shopping and spend, and make happy, because otherwise "the terrorists will have won". Allen Greenspan obliged by making credit as cheap as possible, enabling the subprime and the financial derivatives that are sinking America today.

The terrorists of 9/11 were hoping to disrupt and upend the American way of life, as America, in the terrorist's view, had disrupted and upended the Islamic world. Well, in a way the terrorist have won because of the financial turmoil the US is in today. With Americans heeding Bush's words after 9/11 they went out on a spending spree, jeopardizing the country with a massive debt and the worst economic crisis since the Depression. (That spending spree created unsustainable 'supply-side' economics, with too much capacity.) The terrorist couldn't have hoped for a better calamity to strike the US.

Also, the terrorists managed to draw Bush&Co. into two wars that have caused a financial burden that has put the US at further risk of loosing its status as the mainstay of the world. And it didn't helped that Bush didn't ask American's to sacrifice anything for the war effort.

But on reflection, Bush did get Americans to sacrifice for the war on terror, more than he could have imagined, by putting them and the country into hawk for years to come.

Perhaps Bush already has dementia, thinking that history will be kind to him by giving him a decent legacy.

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