THE highly respected former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, launches a harshly critical attack on President George W Bush's economic competence in his memoir published tomorrow. While his declaration that America's prime motive for the Iraq war was oil will set off one political storm, his onslaught against Republican fiscal mismanagement will cause another, just as the economy becomes a big issue in the primary election campaign. Greenspan's 531-page book will do little to restore faith in the Bush administration's claims of economic proficiency at a time when the markets are deeply unsettled. He has harsh words for Bush, the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the Republicans over their big spending and lack of financial discipline. They are contrasted with former president Bill Clinton, whom Greenspan clearly admires. He writes that Bush's failure to curb spending was "a major mistake" and that Republican congressmen were "feeding at the trough". "The Republicans in Congress lost their way," he says. "They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose [the 2006 congressional election]."
While his declaration that America's prime motive for the Iraq war was oil will set off one political storm, his onslaught against Republican fiscal mismanagement will cause another, just as the economy becomes a big issue in the primary election campaign.
Greenspan's 531-page book will do little to restore faith in the Bush administration's claims of economic proficiency at a time when the markets are deeply unsettled. He has harsh words for Bush, the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the Republicans over their big spending and lack of financial discipline. They are contrasted with former president Bill Clinton, whom Greenspan clearly admires.
He writes that Bush's failure to curb spending was "a major mistake" and that Republican congressmen were "feeding at the trough". "The Republicans in Congress lost their way," he says. "They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose [the 2006 congressional election]."
If one were to call him a lying sack of shit, one would not be inaccurate. It wasn't the spending that exploded the deficit, it was the tax cuts that he had concluded would be no fiscal problem. Tax cuts for the wealthy. Would it surprise anyone to learn that Alan Greenspan is a very wealthy man?
Given Greenspan's affection for Ayn Rand, one wonders what thing Bush might have done that didn't meet with Greenspan's approval.
As Jane Smiley wrote at HuffPo
What amazes me is that Republicans who are now exclaiming at what has happened to the Republican Party (and yes, I talked to my mother this morning) didn't see this coming. Everything, every value, that the Republicans have held up for my lifetime as desirable has been pointing us in this direction. As I've said before on the HuffPost, all of this is the necessary consequence of traditional Republican values, not an accidental byproduct. Or maybe I'll put it this way -- when you reject common humanity, value profits above people, practice sectarian religion, feel contempt for the choices of others, exalt wealth, conflate consumersim with citizenship, join exclusive clubs, daily practice unkindness rather than kindness, and develop theories, such as those of free market capitalism, that allow you to congratulate yourself morally for selfishness and short-sightedness, then being a gang member is in your future.
