Like a bad stomach, Bill Clinton keeps coming up again and again.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/2/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Frank writes: "Donald Trump's campaign to 'Make America Great Again' is one
big, flatulent exercise in delusional nostalgia, as so many have noted.
Given the likely outcome of the American presidential contest, however, it
is Hillary Clinton's delusional nostalgia that may ultimately prove more
harmful for the country."
Hillary Clinton. (photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Why Hillary Clinton's 90s Nostalgia Is So Dangerous
By Thomas Frank, Guardian UK
02 July 16
Times were good in the last years of Bill Clinton's presidency. But to put
the arch-deregulator in charge of an economy wrecked by financial bubbles
is
sheer folly
Donald Trump's campaign to "Make America Great Again" is one big,
flatulent
exercise in delusional nostalgia, as so many have noted. Given the likely
outcome of the American presidential contest, however, it is Hillary
Clinton's delusional nostalgia that may ultimately prove more harmful for
the country.
Campaigning in Kentucky recently, she promised that, should she be elected,
she would task former president Bill Clinton with "revitalizing the
economy,
because he knows how to do it". A few minutes before, she had recited her
husband's qualifications for this job: "In the 90s, everybody's income went
up, not just people at the top. We lifted more people out of poverty than
at
any time in our recent history." And so on.
Ah, the 90s. It seems that Hillary, too, longs to make America great again,
and she reminded the audience in Kentucky of the specific elements of our
lost golden age. First among those gauzy memories: "A budget that is
balanced and in surplus" - like the budget Bill Clinton built in the good
old days before the spendthrift George W Bush administration came in. There
were other ways in which the GOP had diverged from Clinton orthodoxy as
well, like their desire to "Cut taxes on the wealthy [and] get out of the
way of regulation of all kinds," sins that, Hillary said, contributed
directly to the financial crisis of 2008.
American columnists have already expressed their annoyance with Hillary for
offloading her duties-to-come onto her husband and thus compromising the
first female presidency before it's even started. But what really lends
distinction to her announcement is the perversity, the sheer incoherence of
the kind of policies she seems to hope her husband will recommend.
Take her apparent belief that balancing the federal budget is a good way to
"revitalize" an economy stuck in persistent hard times. Nostalgia might
indeed suggest such a course, because that's what Bill Clinton did in the
golden 90s, and those were happy days. But more recent events have taught
us
a different lesson. Europe's turn toward budget-balancing austerity after
the financial crisis is what made their recession so much worse than ours.
President Obama's own quest for a budget-balancing "grand bargain" is what
destroyed his presidency's transformative potential. There is no plainer
lesson from the events of recent years than the folly of austerity and the
non-urgency of budget-balancing.
And deregulation! Before I watched the video of that Hillary Clinton
campaign event, I had never heard someone denounce deregulation and hail
the
economic achievements of Bill Clinton in the same speech. That kind of
mental combination, I've always assumed, puts you in danger of spontaneous
combustion or something. After all, Bill Clinton is America's all-time
champion deregulator. He deregulated banks. He deregulated telecoms. He
appointed arch deregulators Robert Rubin and Larry Summers to high office,
and he re-upped Ronald Reagan's pet Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan. He took
some time out to dynamite the federal welfare system, then he came back and
deregulated banks some more. And derivative securities, too.
Yes, we all know that times were good in the last few years of Bill
Clinton's presidency. But unless 90s nostalgia has completely paralyzed our
brains, we also know that this was due in large part to a series of
financial bubbles. It is true that a different person was in the White
House
when the last of those bubbles exploded, but even a child understands that
doesn't get Bill Clinton entirely off the hook for it. Nor would it be a
good idea to get Bill working on another Nasdaq bubble, even assuming such
a
thing is possible.
It all puts me in mind of a little nostalgia of my own. One of the reasons
I
voted for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton during the hopeful summer of
2008 was because I thought we needed to shut the door on the Clinton legacy
once and for all. Obama won the nomination and, thanks to a global economic
crisis, became president. But then he proceeded to bring back some of the
very Clinton appointees that had done so much to precipitate the disaster
in
the first place.
Now we have Hillary's word that the man who masterminded it all will soon
be
back for yet another try. What is the power these bad ideas of yore have
over otherwise intelligent leaders? Hillary Clinton is a capable person,
and
yet it is as though she has taken no notice of what is actually happening
around her in the present day. Look at where we are now: soaring
inequality,
a recovery that never seems to come, a fraying middle class, a furious
public, and improbable protest candidates drawing millions of votes. But
all
of it is as nothing, I suppose, when compared to the golden allure of the
past.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
Hillary Clinton. (photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/20/hillary-clinton-90s-bi
ll-clinton-economy-thomas-frankhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/201
6/may/20/hillary-clinton-90s-bill-clinton-economy-thomas-frank
Why Hillary Clinton's 90s Nostalgia Is So Dangerous
By Thomas Frank, Guardian UK
02 July 16
Times were good in the last years of Bill Clinton's presidency. But to put
the arch-deregulator in charge of an economy wrecked by financial bubbles
is
sheer folly
onald Trump's campaign to "Make America Great Again" is one big, flatulent
exercise in delusional nostalgia, as so many have noted. Given the likely
outcome of the American presidential contest, however, it is Hillary
Clinton's delusional nostalgia that may ultimately prove more harmful for
the country.
Campaigning in Kentucky recently, she promised that, should she be elected,
she would task former president Bill Clinton with "revitalizing the
economy,
because he knows how to do it". A few minutes before, she had recited her
husband's qualifications for this job: "In the 90s, everybody's income went
up, not just people at the top. We lifted more people out of poverty than
at
any time in our recent history." And so on.
Ah, the 90s. It seems that Hillary, too, longs to make America great again,
and she reminded the audience in Kentucky of the specific elements of our
lost golden age. First among those gauzy memories: "A budget that is
balanced and in surplus" - like the budget Bill Clinton built in the good
old days before the spendthrift George W Bush administration came in. There
were other ways in which the GOP had diverged from Clinton orthodoxy as
well, like their desire to "Cut taxes on the wealthy [and] get out of the
way of regulation of all kinds," sins that, Hillary said, contributed
directly to the financial crisis of 2008.
American columnists have already expressed their annoyance with Hillary for
offloading her duties-to-come onto her husband and thus compromising the
first female presidency before it's even started. But what really lends
distinction to her announcement is the perversity, the sheer incoherence of
the kind of policies she seems to hope her husband will recommend.
Take her apparent belief that balancing the federal budget is a good way to
"revitalize" an economy stuck in persistent hard times. Nostalgia might
indeed suggest such a course, because that's what Bill Clinton did in the
golden 90s, and those were happy days. But more recent events have taught
us
a different lesson. Europe's turn toward budget-balancing austerity after
the financial crisis is what made their recession so much worse than ours.
President Obama's own quest for a budget-balancing "grand bargain" is what
destroyed his presidency's transformative potential. There is no plainer
lesson from the events of recent years than the folly of austerity and the
non-urgency of budget-balancing.
And deregulation! Before I watched the video of that Hillary Clinton
campaign event, I had never heard someone denounce deregulation and hail
the
economic achievements of Bill Clinton in the same speech. That kind of
mental combination, I've always assumed, puts you in danger of spontaneous
combustion or something. After all, Bill Clinton is America's all-time
champion deregulator. He deregulated banks. He deregulated telecoms. He
appointed arch deregulators Robert Rubin and Larry Summers to high office,
and he re-upped Ronald Reagan's pet Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan. He took
some time out to dynamite the federal welfare system, then he came back and
deregulated banks some more. And derivative securities, too.
Yes, we all know that times were good in the last few years of Bill
Clinton's presidency. But unless 90s nostalgia has completely paralyzed our
brains, we also know that this was due in large part to a series of
financial bubbles. It is true that a different person was in the White
House
when the last of those bubbles exploded, but even a child understands that
doesn't get Bill Clinton entirely off the hook for it. Nor would it be a
good idea to get Bill working on another Nasdaq bubble, even assuming such
a
thing is possible.
It all puts me in mind of a little nostalgia of my own. One of the reasons
I
voted for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton during the hopeful summer of
2008 was because I thought we needed to shut the door on the Clinton legacy
once and for all. Obama won the nomination and, thanks to a global economic
crisis, became president. But then he proceeded to bring back some of the
very Clinton appointees that had done so much to precipitate the disaster
in
the first place.
Now we have Hillary's word that the man who masterminded it all will soon
be
back for yet another try. What is the power these bad ideas of yore have
over otherwise intelligent leaders? Hillary Clinton is a capable person,
and
yet it is as though she has taken no notice of what is actually happening
around her in the present day. Look at where we are now: soaring
inequality,
a recovery that never seems to come, a fraying middle class, a furious
public, and improbable protest candidates drawing millions of votes. But
all
of it is as nothing, I suppose, when compared to the golden allure of the
past.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
