Bush's Shrinking Safety Zone

[richlevy]

I try not to post 2 in a row, but it has been 3 days since my last post on this thread.

Greenspan Book Criticizes Bush And Republicans

In a withering critique of his fellow Republicans, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says in his memoir that the party to which he has belonged all his life deserved to lose power last year for forsaking its small-government principles.
In "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," published by Penguin Press, Mr. Greenspan criticizes both congressional Republicans and President George W. Bush for abandoning fiscal discipline.
The book is scheduled for public release Monday. The Wall Street

Mr. Greenspan writes that when President Bush chose Dick Cheney as vice president and Paul O'Neill as treasury secretary -- both colleagues from the Gerald Ford administration, during which Mr. Greenspan was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers -- he "indulged in a bit of fantasy" that this would be the government that would have resulted if Mr. Ford hadn't lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976. But Mr. Greenspan discovered that in the Bush White House, the "political operation was far more dominant" than in Mr. Ford's. "Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences," he writes.

There are a lot of critics of Mr. Greenspan. He had a very important, very high profile job for a very long time. Economics is not a 'hard' science, so his decisions will be second guessed for a very long time.

He does, however, have a reputation for intelligence, honesty, and usually tactful silence. He spent decades trying to say as little as possible in public, knowing the consequences. Now that he is 'out of uniform' and being paid a healthy book advance, he is starting to talk.

A lot of respected former military and intelligence people have come out against Bush's military and intelligence decisions. Now here is one of the most well known economic policy makers in US history saying what many of us already guessed, that there was no long term thinking in the White House when it came to fiscal policy.

This should get interesting. I almost pity the talking head that tries to debate Greenspan.