Bill Clinton was so not down with Thomas Piketty

Worried about Warren, Bill's desperately recasting his economic record as progressive. Tom Frank recalls the facts



So Bill Clinton, according to Thursday’s New York Times, says “he’s been fighting income inequality since his earliest years in Arkansas politics.” How does that square with your memory of the president who enacted the draconian ’90s welfare reform with Newt Gingrich, who overrode labor opposition to trade treaties, who helped deregulate Wall Street and the financial industry? And who, as Bob Woodward so famously reported, knew at the time: “I hope you’re all aware we’re all Eisenhower Republicans. We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn’t that great?”

It’s actually worse than that. Alan Greenspan, who Clinton twice reappointed to chair the Federal Reserve Board, used to joke back in 2007 that “Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.”

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/02/tom_frank_bill_clinton_was_so_not_down_with_thomas_piketty/