How did we get into the current fiscal mess? And are the current administration’s economic policies digging us out? JLF’s Roy Cordato cuts through the rhetoric in this column. I encourage you to read the entire piece, but here are two important excerpts. First:
The policies of the Bush administration did, indeed, get us into this economic disaster. And it is the intensification of these policies that has caused continued economic stagnation and increased unemployment. Obama’s monetary and fiscal policies have, in large part, been a continuation of bad policy choices made during the Bush years.
Then this:
Instead of taking deficits from Bush’s $460 billion to over $1 trillion, he would have used spending cuts to reduce deficits and end the public sector drain on capital markets. And lastly, real change would have meant appointing a Federal Reserve chair who values sound money and does not believe that the economy can be centrally planned through manipulation of money supply and interest rates. In other words, he would have reversed course truly instead of simply stepping on the accelerator and calling it change.
