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The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush
Joseph E. Stiglitz, Vanity Fair
The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy of George W. Bush: the economy. A Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz, sees a generation-long struggle to recoup.
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When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.
I can hear an irritated counterthrust already. The president has not driven the United States into a recession during his almost seven years in office. Unemployment stands at a respectable 4.6 percent. Well, fine. But the other side of the ledger groans with distress: a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—becomes a venture in high finance.
And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the technological powerhouse of the late 20th century. And although the president now understands—or so he says—that we must begin to wean ourselves from oil and coal, we have on his watch become more deeply dependent on both.
Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.
(December 2007)
To be fair, many of the trends Mr. Steiglitz cites have been with us for some time. One can’t blame George Bush for peak oil and the U.S. dependence on oil.
However, it does look as if the United States is in a weaker position now to deal with peak oil than it was a few years ago. -BA
In the Bond Market, a Bleak Prognosis for Iraq
Austen Goolsbee, New York Times
PRESIDENT BUSH’S surge of troops in Iraq has done little to resolve the political debate over the Iraq war. But global financial markets have been monitoring the war for months, and with remarkable consistency, they have concluded that the long-term prospects for a stable Iraq are very bleak.
That is the picture that emerges from a study by Michael Greenstone, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, titled, “Is the ‘Surge’ Working? Some New Facts,” which has been circulating as a working paper in academic circles
(11 November 2007)
A sick graph
Dan Hahn, Solar Power Rocks
These figures are in millions. The source for energy R&D expenditures is from the National Council for Science and the Environment. Take a look here: www.ncseonline.org/Affiliates/Handbook/cms.cfm?id=904
Though the war in Iraq now costs about $120B a year, two authors (one a Nobel prize winner) estimates the total cost of this war exceeds 2 Trillion Dollars: www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15499.htm
“Accrued liabilities for U.S. federal employees’ and veterans’ benefits now total $4.5 trillion. Indeed, our debt for veterans’ health and disability payments has risen by $228 billion in the past year alone…The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the interest payments on the money borrowed to finance the Iraq war will total $264 billion to $308 billion.”
That $2,000,000,000,000? Well, that amount of money could’ve built solar thermal plants here that would have provided energy for 2/3rds of our nation’s energy demand: www.solarpowerrocks.com/solar-politics/how-far-could-68b-go-in-securing-our-energy-independence-pretty-dam
(30 October 2007)
Recommended by Big Gav who also has the graph on his blog
