Bush Repeats His Own History

In light of the U.S. economy’s continuing declines, Wall Street giant Bear Stearns’ fire sale yesterday, the home loan fiasco, and George W. Bush’s stunning ignorance in the face of its all, I was reminded of something former biotech company CEO Paul Abrams wrote this weekend in The Huffington Post:

He did it to Arbusto Energy in the ’70s, to Spectrum 7 and Harken Energy in the ’80s. Enormous debt. Selling his shares to foreigners just days before a negative report on losses, leaving the other shareholders to shoulder the burden.

Now, he’s done it to the United States of America. Enormous debt (a $9 trillion turnaround from a $5 trillion projected surplus to a $4 trillion debt), sold to foreigners. Until, that is, the value of the dollar falls to levels that foreigners may prefer other currencies instead--such as, say, the Euro?

The result?

For the first time since World War II the United States is not the world’s #1 economy. We have slipped behind the European Union.

And yet, Bush will likely be bailed out by his deep-pocketed Republican buddies, just as was done to save him from his string of business failures. It’s too bad that the United States had to be another victim of Dubya’s incompetent management. Let’s hope President Barack Obama can turn things around as ably and quickly as President Bill Clinton turned around the failed economy of Bush’s father. He could make a good start of it by replacing Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.

Any hope now that the economic stimulus package passed by Congress earlier this year and promoted by Bush can boost the nation’s fiscal picture is pretty much gone. Taxpayers will not even see their checks until June, and by then concerns will be so high, that they’ll bank the extra money, rather than spend it.

READ MORE: “Bush: ‘I’m Just a Simple President’” (Think Progress); “The Legacy of George ‘Herbert Hoover’ Bush,” by J. Kingston Pierce (Limbo); “Hey, Big Spender,” by J. Kingston Pierce (Limbo); “The Rise of American Incompetence,” by Daniel Gross (Slate).