{"id":8725,"date":"2010-02-13T12:24:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-13T12:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/a-pox-on-both-their-houses\/"},"modified":"2010-02-13T12:24:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-13T12:24:00","slug":"a-pox-on-both-their-houses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/libertarianism\/a-pox-on-both-their-houses.php","title":{"rendered":"A Pox on Both Their Houses"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>More than a year after President George W. Bush left office, more Americans continue to blame his administration over any other entity for the nation's economic woes, according to a new poll.<\/p><p>In a New York Times\/CBS News survey out Friday, 31 percent of Americans said the Bush administration is at fault for the current state of the economy while only 7 percent pointed their finger at President Obama and his team.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>My assessment differs somewhat&nbsp;from <a href=\"http:\/\/politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com\/2010\/02\/12\/poll-bush-still-blamed-for-economy\/?fbid=TgGHdJnEITe&amp;hpt=Sbin\">this poll's<\/a>;&nbsp; I would argue that the following pre-Obama policies played the main role in generating the current mess:<\/p><blockquote><p>1. The housing policies pursued by HUD, FHA, Fannie, and Freddie.<\/p><p>2. The implicit (almost explicit) guarantees issued by the Fed that it could clean up the housing bubble without much fuss;<\/p><p>3. The growth of expenditure during the Bush administration (Medicare prescription drug coverage, Middle East Wars, pork for everyone).<\/p><p>4. The Wall Street bailouts.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>But&nbsp;then I would argue that the following Obama policies have made the recession deeper and longer:<\/p><blockquote><p>1. Endorsement of the Wall Street bailouts (Obama voted for TARP and appointed a key architect, Tim Geithner, as his Treasury Secretary)<\/p><p>2. The auto bailouts;<\/p><p>3. The fiscal stimulus;<\/p><p>4. Populist ranting at Wall Street over compensation, taxes;<\/p><p>5. Refusal to extend the Bush tax cuts, or repeal the estate tax, or cut taxes rates generally; <\/p><p>6. Pre-occupation with resdistribution over productivity: health care, card check, auction-less cap-and-trade, and continued support for low-income&nbsp;homeownership.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>Thus, plenty of blame to go around.<\/p><div><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/db622_6379328854053402400-8490170721179273526?l=jeffreymiron.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than a year after President George W. Bush left office, more Americans continue to blame his administration over any other entity for the nation's economic woes, according to a new poll.In a New York Times\/CBS News survey out Friday, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/libertarianism\/a-pox-on-both-their-houses.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-libertarianism"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8725"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}