3rd Term

I just watched John Stewart interview Bill Clinton on the Daily Show. Clinton brought up the idea that if the huge Wall Street gains of the late 90's were invested into green technology rather than the housing market, much of our current economic problems could have been avoided. This goes along with what Friedman said about how the railroad bubble of the 19th century and the IT bubble of the 90's both came to a painful end, but in the long run, left us with vastly improved transportation and techonological capabilities. Similarly, if there was a green technology bubble, we'd suffer short term losses when that bubble burst, but be left with much more efficient ways of producing energy for our country. As Friedman said, the only thing were left with now is bad debt and empty condos in Florida.

When a President Cries Wolf

A laundry list of potential disasters have been spewed from Washington for the past seven years. The nation soaked it in. Bush had a long way to fall from his popularity after 9/11. The fall started with the rising violence in Iraq and Katrina at home. A real live disaster which inspired no real response from Bush. People saw incompetence from the leaders who led the war in Iraq and were supposed to protect us at home. The disaster came, but it wasn't what we were told to expect.

Now, the biggest disaster to our economy since the Great Depression has arrived and there is 0 trust in Washington to get us out. Overwhelmingly, Americans called their elected officials to say we'd rather risk the fate of the markets than put our financial future in the hands of the Bush administration. Lack of trust is so blatant that only 1/3 of Requblicans and 60% of Democrats voted for the bill. The Dow fell 777 points or 7% by the end of the day. Biggest single day point loss ever.

As Paul Krugman said, "So what we now have is non-functional government in the face of a major crisis, because Congress includes a quorum of crazies and nobody trusts the White House an inch." "We're a banana republic with nukes."