As well as a banking system in the verge of collapse. So Jeb has that going for him.

Because of Nafta.

In the real world he's viewed much more favorably.

Were you even alive during the Clinton administration? More importantly, were you working and providing for a family in the 90's? You obviously weren't even born yet much less working then because you'd know those years were some of the best in the 20th century for working people. That's how you define whether or not an administration, especially a Democrat was good. Not by some contrived economic bullshit that has no relevance 25 years later.

and before the burst in 2000.

Tech did not drive that economy. The Internet was only beginning half way through Clinton. Good jobs brought back from overseas, compatible exports, and most importantly a world at peace, among many other good things drove that economy.

There was no other bubble.

Alan Greenspan noticed it was going as early as 1996, as his statement about irrational exuberance was made in December of that year.

drove up wages and created solid jobs when all we had was 2400 baud modems in 1996.

Easy money policy by the Fed and hogwild lending by banks. In other words, it was caused the exact same way as every bubble.

Of the 19th century is a horrible thing because HRC is running?

You have absolutely no clue whatsoever. The ultimate in ignorance.

I think you mean the 20th century.

The problem is that the prosperity was a mirage. Do you really want easy money that leads to yet ANOTHER bubble that impoverishes yet more people? That's the entire problem that people have with the Clinton years. It was a chimera. It was built on bullshit and his bubble popped as soon as enough people woke up and realized they'd lent money to idiots with websites and no business plans. Not only that, but they'd fueled an orgy of M&A activity that sought "synergies" by laying people off left and right. Or did you forget that part of the 90s?

I'm no advocate of a hard money policy, but only an idiot wants to go back to the "good, old days" of Alan Greenspan greasing the skids for every two-bit huckster with a line of bullshit to sell. I'd prefer a rational monetary policy based on extending credit to actual productive businesses than tossing free cash to Wall Street to lend out for speculative purposes. Well, lending when they're not actively creating the speculative purposes I should say.

People investing capital in companies that were just a dream in someone's mind. No products or services just a promise that they would go public and everyone owning a piece would become an instant millionaire.

The big banks (the same guys that crashed us in 2008/2009) were the ones putting the IPOs together for all the tech companies. They would set the initial stock price and presell to their best "customers", mostly their partner investment banks. What happened then was that because their "analysis" of the initial price was low compared to what had been happening in the market, the first few hours/days led to a massive increase in the stock value.

That had two effects, the initial buyers (their presale buddies) made huge profits and the company only got half or less of the real stock price as operating capital. If an IPO is fairly priced, there shouldn't be a massive immediate move and the company will get their fair share of their value to build the company for the long term.

As usual, the banksters used the arcane nature of their business to fleece the public and keep the cash at the expense of all others, including their trusting clients. They make money no matter which way the market moves.

While I couldn't care less about Zuckerberg's personal fortunes, the Facebook IPO didn't have a huge move out of the box, so they got a fair value for the company based on the market perception. Think it is probably becaue the public remembered the lessons of the tech bubble.

than I do.

I seem to remember Clinton's sanctions and continual bombing against the Iraqis killed half a million people. You remember that, right? Where Clinton's SOS Albright said of that genocide that it was worth it? And then there was Plan Colombia and the Haitian and Mexican farmers left destitute thanks to NAFTA.

The 2008 market crash is largely attributed to Clinton signing away Glass-Steagal. I can only imagine the millions of Americans who lost everything thanks to the blatant theft allowed to flourish due to that little stroke of the pen. Then there's Hillary...hawkish on Iran, hawkish on Libya & Syria, hawkish on Russia. She would love to bomb more women and children and then claim to be their champion. It's positively nauseating.

The Clintons and their Third Way gang have been nothing but toxic to the Democratic party.

Did you have a job then? Did you provide for a family then?

Why do you think those items don't apply to me?

I could really enjoy being a bit younger, but don't think I'm ready to go back to 16.



Edit to add: I actually like Hillary Clinton and will be happy to vote for her in the general election. I like Bernie and O'Malley too. But I'm really not where you want to expend your fervor. As for Bill, I think his presidency was overall pretty good, but he did do some bullshit stuff as well. I'm just not the black-or-white ideologue you might have been expecting.

That lead to me spending a shitload of money. Which, along with everyone else getting paid a shitload in the dot-com boom, resulted in a booming economy.

Then people realized just adding ".com" to the end of a terrible idea isn't a reason to pay people a shitload of money. And the dot-com crash happened.

I am now finally receiving the same salary I was paid in 1999, due to that insane and utterly unsustainable bubble. Because I have 20 years of experience writing code, instead of merely the ability to do so. The intervening years were not pleasant - "your paycheck isn't coming, and you're all laid off" every 6 months is very bad for your personal finances.

THIS is why her husbands term comes into play now, another question her supporters are asking why. It is because we are living in Bill's NAFTA, end of the Glass Steagall Act world. It takes time....but here we are!

Clinton achieved a surplus and steady growth during his time.

That move is why he is worth a couple of orders of magnitude more money today than he was in 2000.

If it's HRC and Bush lll and the election becomes a referendum on the Bush and Clinton years my money is on the president who gave us the longest economic expansion in the history of the republic and no military quagmires.

But if that's the far spectrum of the argument that's going to get made, in the long-term were going to be fucked I think.

and I would rather NOT do that to you.

Love and solidarity,
Vol

peace on earth

The OTHER thing I learned from watching that conflict unfold is that the United Nations needs it's own Marine Corps.
The fact that U N peacekeeping forces are strictly defensive in nature wasn't worth a thin dime in either that conflict, or in continental Africa.
To actually stop bad guys , somebody has to go to where the bad guys live, and be willing to kick down the fucking door.
And im tired of it being the default position that it should be US.

i don't see us mired in Kosovo the way we are mired in Iraq.

There were mass genocides in Colombia and Iraq that WE, under Clinton's direction, are largely responsible for. Did you support Bush kicking down the doors of the Iraqi people when he illegally invaded their country?

Neoliberals like the Clintons are equally as deadly to brown people as the neocons.

Like I said, I'm tired of the expecation being that that kind of action is the role of the United States in the world (even from some our own people at times)

I agree with you aboout Neoliberals being as Hawkish as the neocons...it's about both of them sharing a worldview that the Empire must be maintained at all costs. It's tiring.

If we really wanted peace in the M E, we could have it. We have a pretty good idea of the factors that lead to not-peace, and we know they are reverseable. But since Not-Peace is just sooooooo much more lucretive, I don't see it happening without a major social re-orientation of our priorities.

...and Nafta was not prosperity

to stop a genocide. Are you against our going in, doing our business and getting the fuck out?

...but perhaps he should fact check that with Captain Scott O'Grady...

Were you against our going to Kosovo?

history that has been 100% peaceful?

then why do you try to support the OP?

every administration has good and bad. Clinton's was more good than bad and I'd take it over every single republican administration since I'm alive. I'm pointing out that no administration has been entirely peaceful - Kosovo was through no fault of our own so I really don't get those who whine about it now.

How about Somalia? Haiti? Were those also peace or is the OP claim false?

also humanitarian in nature. Pretty sure the OP was talking about offensive wars but I don't want to speak for the poster. Like I said, completely indifferent to the OP. Whose administration would you like our nominee to emulate?

Genocide. WWII wasn't peace either. Jesus fucking Christ. Absolutely no discernment. If you can't tell the difference between Bosnia and the Bush invasion of Iraq.....
If only an entire race of people were wiped off the face of the planet so you could pretend there was "peace."

Job growth was mainly a result of the dot-com bubble.

Also happened on his watch. A big favor to banks.

that a federal budget surplus is a lag on growth, an "anti-stimulus." One of many factors that weakened the economy and set us up for a fall.

Job growth was widespread and unemployment frictional.

There were only 2.1MM tech jobs in 1997 out of well over 129MM working, and any such "bubble" would never have burst as there were 3.9MM in 2012.

The dot com boom made a few people very rich, a few hundred thousand lose their investments, and embarrassed a few CEOs with premature name changes. One thing it never did was employ a huge number of people or drive a large part of the economic activity of the nation.

Some people are just never going to settle for less than their ideal of perfect. Did Bill Clinton do everything I wanted him to do? Heeellll no, but did he do a lot of good, Heeeeellllll yes. He was the most effective, productive President since FDR, IMHO.

I'm certainly thankful that 1993-2001 did not consist of George Bush Sr's second term and/or Bob Dole's first term.

Granted i did not agree with him all the time but i thought he was good.

Banking deregulation
NAFTA
Welfare "reform"
The Telecom Act

Four ticking time bombs he championed willingly; they all blew up after he bugged out. Don't tell me be didn't know they would.

He benefited from the Internet bubble, where some goon with a plan for selling pet food online could get capitalized overnight to the tune of a couple hundred million bucks. A lot of that boom went up in smoke.

...it's how he got elected.

Both times.

It's a choice between two evils. I'm not buying it. That kind of thinking got W elected and two corporatist judges on the SC. I don't care what the Nader denialists say.

good for bragging rights but another time bomb, pulling money out of the economy and acting as an anti-stimulus.

believe people are trying to attack his presidency because they don't like Hillary. Sad, but oh so true.

People attack Hillary because she was onboard with the crap he pulled in office, deregulating banks, telecoms, doing 'free trade deals' and deforming welfare. His Presidency looked great at the time, but it was all smoke and mirrors to benefit the wealthy, with a temporary boost to the rest of us that vanished like mist on a warm morning.

but I agree, best eight years in my memory.

He was the best Republican President we've ever had. Who else could have deregulated so much, while also drastically reducing welfare and passing DOMA?

As for myself, I don't like Republican Presidents.

He deregulated and helped create a bubble economy, setting the country up for a crash. He also 'reformed' welfare, iirc.

The Bush depression couldn't have existed without Clinton deregulation.

If your premise is correct:

Republican and Republican Lite (i.e. DLC) economic policies were responsible for the Great Recession, and that even politicians with a "D" after their name bear a big portion of the blame.

But that's not what you wanted to hear, is it?

Does that suggest that it is of no moment whether a Republican or Hillary Clinton occupy the White House?

is just like Republicans on economic issues? Because that would have to be true for it to be of no moment whether a Republican or Hillary Clinton occupies the White House.

But you knew that. You also knew, or should have, that I wasn't talking about Hillary, I was talking about Bill and his economic legacy. Do you want to tie Hillary to it? Or do you want to allow her to claim the successes and distance herself from the failures? Just curious.

No. I know that Bill Clinton was preferable to Bush Pere and Bob Dole and Hillary Clinton would be preferable to John Ellis Bush.

Or do you give him a pass because he was not a Republican?

The one that started in 2001 was the aftermath of the dot-com crash.

The one that started in 2007 was "the great recession", and hurt McCain.

Who some here have a burning hatred for.

I've seen the obvious ones named already, so I'll point out one that is timely. It's unlikely AIG would have tanked but for Rubin and Summers pushing to get rid of Brooksley Born. She wanted to regulate derivatives, which Rubin and pals opposed quite strongly. It's hard to imagine that had they not intervened to work with Newt Gingrich's Congress to declare a moratorium on derivatives regulation by the CFTC that credit default swaps would be allowed with no insurance interest. That was the entire basis of the failure of AIG and the stealth bailout to Wall Street under the guise of "saving" AIG.

His economic "accomplishments" are vastly overrated; the economic expansion of the '90's was mostly the result of the tech bubble (which collapsed just as Clinton was leaving office; the early 2000's recession had already started on his watch) and low oil prices (helped in part by the 1998 Asian financial crisis). Meanwhile there was a steady bleed of jobs in the manufacturing sector thanks to NAFTA and trade deals with China (I lived in the South, in the '90's; during Clinton's presidency? I saw a lot of textile mills close because they were moving their operations to China, with lots of jobs lost, for instance; there were over a million jobs in that industry alone lost between 1994 and 2001), and the economic deregulation of the '90's (most particularly the repeal of Glass-Steagall and its erasure of the distinctions between commercial and investment banking) helped set the stage for the subprime crisis and the 2008 financial collapse. From the perspective of 15 years out Clinton's legacy looks a lot more like Calvin Coolidge's (the 1920's were also an era of significant economic expansion and unprecedented prosperity; no-one, these days, thinks Coolidge was a great president).

Well said.

How many people were employed by internet companies or even in tech jobs at all? What percentage of GDP did such industries represent and how and when did that contract sharply?

Tiresome anecodotes about a few lucky grifters making a billion or two by calling something worthless "worthless dot com" does not demonstrate how the 90s saw unemployment in the 3s, rapid GDP growth and a budget surplus for the first, and only, time in 50 years.

There was certainly a ripple of internet and tech activity, but it was small potatoes in the scale of a fourteen-digit economy and never really went away, and in fact grew rather than "burst" at an aggregate level. There are far more tech workers now than in Clinton's term for example.

People like me were employed by them, and getting paid extremely well. Despite only having 5 years experience, I was getting paid as if I had 20 years experience.

That lead to me spending a lot more money. For example, eating out for lunch every day meant restaurants and wait staff made more money, which they spent, boosting other industries, and so on down the line. Multiply that by the millions employed by those grifters, and you get a large boost to the overall economy.

That is how the dot-com boom translated to a low overall unemployment - easy money to millions of people meant lots of spending, which cranks up the overall economy. Meanwhile, manufacturing was dying.

The easiest way to look at the macroeconomic effects of Clinton’s presidency is to look at three main points: gross domestic product (GDP), inflation rates, and unemployment rates.

Clinton took the deficit of 4.7% of GDP in 1992 and turned it into a surplus of 2.4% of GDP in 2000. Federal spending fell to 18.4 percent of GDP. in 2000 from 22.2 percent in 1992. Although Clinton raised taxes in 1993, he cut them in 1997.

Clinton also lowered inflation rates down to 2.3%. Democratic presidents had an average of about double that rate, and Republicans had even higher rates (Burns and Taylor 389).

The average unemployment rate of Democratic presidents, excluding Clinton, is currently about 4.3% while the average unemployment rate for Republican presidents is currently at about 6.1%. Bill Clinton’s policy achieved a thirty-year low in April 2000 with an unemployment rate of 3.9% More jobs were created per month during the Clinton presidency than during any other presidency in U.S. history.

Yet Coolidge is generally agreed by modern economists and historians to have been an indifferent president (he ranks in the bottom third in most scholar surveys).

He did amazing things for our economy. Nader and his choice for President, George W. Bush undid all of his progress for the middle class.

People (and trolls pretending to be Liberals) here blame Bill Clinton for Bush II's disaster without a clue for reality.

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Longest economic expansion in American history
The President's strategy of fiscal discipline, open foreign markets and investments in the American people helped create the conditions for a record 115 months of economic expansion. Our economy has grown at an average of 4 percent per year since 1993.

More than 22 million new jobs
More than 22 million jobs were created in less than eight years -- the most ever under a single administration, and more than were created in the previous twelve years.

Highest homeownership in American history
A strong economy and fiscal discipline kept interest rates low, making it possible for more families to buy homes. The homeownership rate increased from 64.2 percent in 1992 to 67. 7 percent, the highest rate ever.

Lowest unemployment in 30 years
Unemployment dropped from more than 7 percent in 1993 to just 4.0 percent in November 2000. Unemployment for African Americans and Hispanics fell to the lowest rates on record, and the rate for women is the lowest in more than 40 years.

Raised education standards, increased school choice, and doubled education and training investment
Since 1992, reading and math scores have increased for 4th, 8th, and 12th graders, math SAT scores are at a 30-year high, the number of charter schools has grown from 1 to more than 2,000, forty-nine states have put in place standards in core subjects and federal investment in education and training has doubled.

Largest expansion of college opportunity since the GI Bill
President Clinton and Vice President Gore have nearly doubled financial aid for students by increasing Pell Grants to the largest award ever, expanding Federal Work-Study to allow 1 million students to work their way through college, and by creating new tax credits and scholarships such as Lifetime Learning tax credits and the HOPE scholarship. At the same time, taxpayers have saved $18 billion due to the decline in student loan defaults, increased collections and savings from the direct student loan program.

Connected 95 percent of schools to the Internet
President Clinton and Vice President Gore's new commitment to education technology, including the E-Rate and a 3,000 percent increase in educational technology funding, increased the percentage of schools connected to the Internet from 35 percent in 1994 to 95 percent in 1999.

Lowest crime rate in 26 years
Because of President Clinton's comprehensive anti-crime strategy of tough penalties, more police, and smart prevention, as well as common sense gun safety laws, the overall crime rate declined for 8 consecutive years, the longest continuous drop on record, and is at the lowest level since 1973.

100,000 more police for our streets
As part of the 1994 Crime Bill, President Clinton enacted a new initiative to fund 100,000 community police officers. To date more than 11,000 law enforcement agencies have received COPS funding.

Enacted most sweeping gun safety legislation in a generation
Since the President signed the Brady bill in 1993, more than 600,000 felons, fugitives, and other prohibited persons have been stopped from buying guns. Gun crime has declined 40 percent since 1992.

Family and Medical Leave Act for 20 million Americans
To help parents succeed at work and at home, President Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993. Over 20 million Americans have taken unpaid leave to care for a newborn child or sick family member.

Smallest welfare rolls in 32 years
The President pledged to end welfare as we know it and signed landmark bipartisan welfare reform legislation in 1996. Since then, caseloads have been cut in half, to the lowest level since 1968, and millions of parents have joined the workforce. People on welfare today are five times more likely to be working than in 1992.

Higher incomes at all levels
After falling by nearly $2,000 between 1988 and 1992, the median family's income rose by $6,338, after adjusting for inflation, since 1993. African American family income increased even more, rising by nearly $7,000 since 1993. After years of stagnant income growth among average and lower income families, all income brackets experienced double-digit growth since 1993. The bottom 20 percent saw the largest income growth at 16.3 percent.

Lowest poverty rate in 20 years
Since Congress passed President Clinton's Economic Plan in 1993, the poverty rate declined from 15.1 percent to 11.8 percent last year — the largest six-year drop in poverty in nearly 30 years. There are now 7 million fewer people in poverty than in 1993. The child poverty rate declined more than 25 percent, the poverty rates for single mothers, African Americans and the elderly have dropped to their lowest levels on record, and Hispanic poverty dropped to its lowest level since 1979.

Lowest teen birth rate in 60 years
In his 1995 State of the Union Address, President Clinton challenged Americans to join together in a national campaign against teen pregnancy. The birth rate for teens aged 15-19 declined every year of the Clinton Presidency, from 60.7 per 1,000 teens in 1992 to a record low of 49.6 in 1999.

Lowest infant mortality rate in American history
The Clinton Administration expanded efforts to provide mothers and newborn children with health care. Today, a record high 82 percent of all mothers receive prenatal care. The infant mortality rate has dropped from 8.5 deaths per 1,000 in 1992 to 7.2 deaths per 1,000 in 1998, the lowest rate ever recorded.

Deactivated more than 1,700 nuclear warheads from the former Soviet Union
Efforts of the Clinton-Gore Administration led to the dismantling of more than 1,700 nuclear warheads, 300 launchers and 425 land and submarine based missiles from the former Soviet Union.

Protected millions of acres of American land
President Clinton has protected more land in the lower 48 states than any other president. He has protected 5 new national parks, designated 11 new national monuments and expanded two others and proposed protections for 60 million acres of roadless areas in America's national forests.

Paid off $360 billion of the national debt
Between 1998-2000, the national debt was reduced by $363 billion — the largest three-year debt pay-down in American history. We are now on track to pay off the entire debt by 2009.

Converted the largest budget deficit in American history to the largest surplus
Thanks in large part to the 1993 Deficit Reduction Act, the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, and President Clinton's call to save the surplus for debt reduction, Social Security, and Medicare solvency, America has put its fiscal house in order. The deficit was $290 billion in 1993 and expected to grow to $455 billion by this year. Instead, we have a projected surplus of $237 billion.

Lowest government spending in three decades
Under President Clinton federal government spending as a share of the economy has decreased from 22.2 percent in 1992 to a projected 18.5 percent in 2000, the lowest since 1966.

Lowest federal income tax burden in 35 years
President Clinton enacted targeted tax cuts such as the Earned Income Tax Credit expansion, $500 child tax credit, and the HOPE Scholarship and Lifetime Learning Tax Credits. Federal income taxes as a percentage of income for the typical American family have dropped to their lowest level in 35 years.

More families own stock than ever before
The number of families owning stock in the United States increased by 40 percent since 1992.

Most diverse cabinet in American history
The President has appointed more African Americans, women and Hispanics to the Cabinet than any other President in history. He appointed the first female Attorney General, the first female Secretary of State and the first Asian American cabinet secretary ever.

The unintentional comedy in this thread is utterly priceless. Lots of revisionist history bullshit too.

....because....well....you know....Hillary. ..............

This madness of lumping Clinton in with the Bushes is nothing but Clinton Derangement Syndrome. Sadly it's the Bernistas that have it now.

Triangulation

He played everyone off of everyone else.

DOMA
NAFTA
DADT
Welfare "reform"
"The end of big government as we know it!"
And of course, the horribly irresponsible situation of the blue dress.

Throw in banking deregulation and the fact that the prosperity was collapsing as his term ended and really there's not much there to remember fondly. Much of what he "accomplished", democrats spent the next 8+ years campaigning AGAINST.

And then the last 8 years has been a return to that same triangulated bullshit.

TPP/TPA
ACA
Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan
Drone Strikes
NSA Total Information Awareness

I am struck by how few Democrats, who today preach social justice like it is a religion, do not remember how horrid the 1990's were.

AIDS, DOMA, DADT were devastating to the LGBT communities. Clinton's administration was not friendly to this community.

And for the first 'black president' his welfare reform and the expansion of Reagan's war on drugs were daggers in the heart of AA communities all across America. Yet again the Clinton administration was not friendly to POC.

But he was slick willy. He could sell water to a fish. HRC is trying to do that same game - triangulation, FDR's legacy (ha ha!), and evolution on social justice issues when there are other candidates much stronger on both civil rights and economic progressivism.

Bush who followed him was just as horrible. The election of Bill Clinton was the best news for the LGBT community in dealing with AIDS and the first good news we'd had.
Funding for AIDS related programs within the HHS increased 150% during the Clinton years, with funding for the Ryan White Care Act programs increased 385%.
Bill Clinton established the first Office of National AIDS Policy at the White House, over a decade into the crisis, his Republican predecessors had done nothing of the sort.

I could go on and on and on. Bill Clinton has continued to be a very important figure in the international AIDS battle after his Presidency.

Your post seems to suggest AIDS happened under Bill, but the AIDS crisis was long underway before he got elected. His election was a boon to the HIV/AIDS community.

The AID crisis started under Reagan but the treatment of LGBT's that continued during the 1990's with DOMA and DADT, you must agree, was egregious.

Has Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton evolved? Sure they have. I am glad that Bill is an important figure in the international AIDS fight...today.

I do not suggest that it all happened under Bill, but it certainly did continue. Many forgive and forget. Given the choice between a candidate that needed to evolve on civil rights issue and one that has always supported LGBT rights, it is a no brainer for me.

Triangulation seems much less an indictment than revisionist history...

Just wondering which of those you're now denying.

that DADT actually made military life easier for LGTB soldiers. You do know what it replaced, right?

And Even Clinton said it didn't work out the way he was led to believe.

The economy was undeniably the best under Clinton of all the presidents that I can remember, and I can remember Ike.

While I do not find Bill Clinton likable, I recognize that he was good on a lot of issues as President. I campaigned for him in 1992 and '96.

I've always preferred Hillary Clinton much more than Bill.

in and itself more than enough to declare the first Clinton Presidency a complete disaster. Far more than enough. That one act more than any other unleashed the banks to strip all the wealth from the middle class, led directly to the housing bubble-bust and the bailouts that followed.

...we're debating this?

Bill Clinton did was to start "The New Democrats" meme, iow
to get the party to align with the corporatists and the banks.
This lead to all the problems that people mentioned above.

In a very clever way he changed the Democratic Party to
republican light. That I can never forget.

administrations. ZERO. But you'd never know that from the bullshit I'm seeing posted here on this thread.

The first time, he wasn't my main choice (didn't particularly like him, in fact), but supported him when he became the nominee. I gave him a chance, he had a mixed bag of outcomes (some good, some bad), but after '94 or thereabouts he started collaborating with Dick Morris. I voted for him the second time around, but I was definitely holding my nose when I did.

.. are so completely oblivious to history. Guess what, the things Clinton did took a while to bear "fruit".

NAFTA
repeal of Glass-Stegall
passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act
passage of the Telecommunications Act
ending "welfare as we know it"

Go do some research. Learn what caused the financial meltdown of 2008 and see that it could not have happened without #2 and #3. Realize that we have not recovered from that and probably never really will.