The Money Grab

Last week's Newsweek had a great article by Francis Fukuyama a professor of international economy at Johns Hopkins University, titled "The Fall of America, Inc." He discussed the damage to the American "brand" that has been done by this most recent stock crisis.

The part that I was most intrigued by came as he discussed the transition in our economy from the Reagan to the Clinton years. Fukuyama highlights a fact that has totally driven me crazy in the last eight years with Dubya in office, but apparently it has its roots back in the Reagan era—today's so called conservatives no longer seem to believe in only spending what they bring in. Apparently this is something that went the way of the dodo during Reagan's tenure when he promoted the idea that any tax cut would stimulate the economy so much that it didn't matter what the government spent, they would be taking in so much.

Psych! What happened is we started the 1990s with a huge deficit due to those tax cuts. Clinton took office, raised taxes and produced a surplus. Cut to Dubya, taxes get cut and we end up with a deficit so huge they have to take down the deficit clock in NYC due to LACK OF NUMBER SPACE!!!! 

So although Cheney apparently told Dubya early on that "deficits don't matter" that's just one more thing that Cheney has gotten horribly, horribly wrong. Why should I even be surprised. And of course here comes McCain yelling that Obama is going to raise taxes (the horror!) and that is going to kill our economy. So what does he want to do? Lower taxes  and freeze spending. Does anyone else see a huge problem here?