Greenspan Spills the Beans

Former Federal reserve Chairman and lifelong Republican Alan Greenspan has a new book out and his honesty is quite revealing. He basically pans the first George Bush for trying to have undue influence on him to effect the 1992 election, says Bush the Younger and his team pushed irresponsible economic policies because of politics and (shocker!) praises the Clinton economic team for their intelligent and long term thinking. Of course, fair minded observers of politics have already come to the same conclusion, but to hear it from one of the most respected economic forces in US History gives great weight to this truth. [Greenspan rates the Presidents from Nixon to GWB]

Many are upset that Greenspan remained quiet while George W. Bush wrecked the economy and I understand that. Loyalty too often takes precedence over the good of the nation in Republican circles. Most commentators on Greenspan's book are focusing on his opinion that Republican deserved to lose in 2006 because they supported Bush's poor economic policies and strayed from conservative ideals. My quibble with that is that I don't think that the "conservative movement" strayed from it's beliefs only in recent years. Rather, as I have argued many times here, the "conservative movement" has always been a fraud- using small government rhetoric to lure unsuspecting voters but never (yes, even RedGod Reagan ran up the deficit to record numbers) actually shrinking anything but the opportunity for non rich Republican interests to get ahead. HERE is an article about the book and below are some of the most noteworthy sections from the article:

In the 500-page book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," Mr. Greenspan describes the George W. Bush administration as so captive to its own political operation that it paid little attention to fiscal discipline, and he described Mr. Bush’s first two Treasury secretaries, Paul H. O’Neill and John W. Snow, as essentially powerless. Mr. Bush, he writes, was never willing to contain spending or veto bills that drove the country into deeper and deeper deficits, as Congress abandoned rules that required that the cost of tax cuts be offset by savings elsewhere. "The Republicans in Congress lost their way," writes Mr. Greenspan, a self-described libertarian Republican. "They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose" in the 2006 election, when they lost control of the House and Senate.

Of the presidents he worked with, Mr. Greenspan reserves his highest praise for Bill Clinton, whom he described in his book as a sponge for economic data who maintained "a consistent, disciplined focus on long-term economic growth." It was a presidency marred by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he writes, but he fondly describes his alliance with two of Mr. Clinton’s Treasury secretaries, Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers, in battling financial crises in Latin America and then Asia.

By contrast, Mr. Greenspan paints a picture of Mr. Bush as a man driven more by ideology and the desire to fulfill campaign promises made in 2000, incurious about the effects of his economic policy, and an administration incapable of executing policy.