Osler's Razor

What you're describing should all eventually be corrected by market forces. Depreciation of the dollar relative to foreign currencies is continuing to make our goods more attractive. This in turn will increase the demand for US goods, increasing the demand for US dollars, increasing the number of jobs, and increasing the value of real estate.

Granted, oil prices have played a part in delaying the process but most economists, financial experts, and companies believe things will turn around.

Looking at it from a different angle, this week's Fortune has this article that reads:

"Twice I have asked Alan Greenspan what he considers the greatest threat to the U.S. economy, and both times he has answered immediately with a single word: Medicare. He isn't so worried about the trade deficit and the housing crash; he figures market forces will sort them out. But Medicare is something else - a multitrillion-dollar problem that's about to get dramatically worse, and one that nobody wants to talk about. You'd think that the greatest threat to America's economy would be Topic A for the presidential candidates. But it's actually a topic they hate to touch."

Overall it's a short article that makes some interesting points.
 

Greenspan is right, but he's not a politician. To a politician, it matters that market adjustments, especially sharp ones, create millionsof individual tragedies on the way to an adjustment.

He's right about Medicare, too, a problem made much worse when the "small government" party controlled the presidency, the House and the Senate, and created Part D for prescriptions.
 

Well, what about the cost of the war in Iraq, over the last 5 years? That has surely had a ripple effect, wouldn't you think?

I'm glad there are three smart candidates in the race for president. No, it's true they are not proposing compelling solutions for the economic problems. Maybe they will, or someone who works for them will.

But I'm amazed, with the state of things, that anybody wants to take on that job at all. The challenges are mind-boggling.
 

It is sad that the media is so ruthless when it comes to covering candidates.I know they need to be scrutinized, but it seems they are all looking for just you know dirt the kind of buzzwords like I didn't inhale and stuff like that.

I want to know that the candidates are well qualified, and have demonstrated leadership skills and are not all corrupt etc. ANd there are some things about their character I want to know but since the job itself is in such a glaring spotlight if they start one day sleeping on the job at least the press will notice.

What bothers me about all of this scrutiny is that it does bad things. It discourages really great candidates from running for office, if they even had the slightest hiccup in the past in college or something. Second, it makes the people who do run into these SPIN people who feel the need to gloss up everything they say and not talk as much about solutions. THey end up telling the country what it wants to hear, and its really like a job interview you know? I mean do you really want to hire the person who brown-noses you during the interview or is really fake or transparent, or is sort of like a slick used car sales guy or something? I think with this process taht is who you get to run, and I am not saying that the candidates now are all like this, BUT they sort of HAVE to turn into that in order to get the job...

so in a way, you have to become such an ass to get the job, that I wonder if its worth it and if it is even possible to tell anymore if someone wouldmake a good president.

I never liked Clinton until the end when I realized that he did a lot of good things. I would gladly elect a guy with all the women and whitewater and all of that crap to get a person who could really do a great job, BUT it does not work that way I suppose. I wonder if Bill Clinton rant today if he would get elected?
 

You know come to think of it, I'll bet there are a LOT of former presidents that would NOT get elected in this day and age if they were to run... I mean even recent ones like Bill Clinton, JFK, FDR...Harry Truman, Ford, Nixon? who knows if their candidacy would survive under today's amount of scrutiny.. Certainly CERTAINLY Kennedy;s character would come under fire, as he had this insatiable sex thing going on....

People like DRUDGE and the SMoking GUN would have them for lunch you know? FDR with the wheelchair, Lincoln for his wife, JFK for the women... they turned out to be GREAT Presidents... Lincoln ended slavery for goodness sake! But if he were to campaign today his wife would get the Kitty Dukakis treatment and he would be outta there. We would get - you know - some lightweight instead.
 

The cost of the Iraq war is primarily paid in dollars to US firms, so it functions in many ways like gov't domestic spending and boosts our economy. I think gov't spending is a stupid way to accomplish economic support, but it is generally the way that Democrats like to do it.

I agree w/ Swanburg, but think that both he and Greenspan underestimate the effect of the dollar's diminishing role as a reserve currency (which will boost inflation despite increasing sales of underpriced US goods). I also think they miss the likely continued rise in oil prices as India and China continue to develop and suck up all the oil they can ahold of (which is inflationary).

The problem is that Bush has been AWOL on the economic front for nearly 8 years, except to occassionally jump in and screw things up. For example, he supports a weak dollar on the premise that it will correct our trade imbalances. The better way to correct those imbalances is to attack the root causes (protectionism here and abroad) rather than undermining the US currency and screwing business planners. He also appointed Bernanke who evidently is unaware that changing interest rates without a warning creates havoc in financial markets at a time when those markets are already unstable. And screws forecasting all to hell. Bush's immigration plan had the effect of undermining US wages and increasing unemployment while stressing domestic social services (inflationary). As Osler points out, he even added a massive prescription drug entitlement.

So disappointing. He deserves the treatment he will get from academicians, even though much of what he has done wrong are actually liberal policy positions which they would have supported from a Democrat. If supply siders needed more data to make their case, they should have it now.
 

I would disagree with the belief that JFK was a great president. Here is a comparison from David Marmet in a great essay on the Village Voice website(www.villagevoice.com)...
"I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh."