Critic says Bush post-9/11 spending strategy led to Wall Street crisis

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/presidentbush/2008/10/bush-fault.html

After terrorists struck on 9/11, killing 3,000 people and shaking Americans to their core, President Bush launched a "war on terror" but told consumers to keep on spending.

"Get down to Disney World in Florida," he said two weeks after the attack. "Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed."

Now, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University is arguing that in encouraging spending instead of sacrifice as the nation went to war first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, Bush fueled a binge of credit card spending. Andrew Bacevich wrote in Sunday's Washington Post:

Bush seems to have calculated -- cynically but correctly -- that prolonging the credit-fueled consumer binge could help keep complaints about his performance as commander in chief from becoming more than a nuisance. Members of Congress calculated -- again correctly --that their constituents were looking to Capitol Hill for largess, not lessons in austerity. In this sense, recklessness on Main Street, on Wall Street and at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue proved mutually reinforcing.

Bacevich, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, further argues that the "go to Disney World" strategy also eventually forced Bush to scale back his own ambitions to transform the Middle East. Public appetite for war ebbed with increasing casualties and costs. Now, says the professor, the bill is due.

-- Johanna Neuman

It's time someone puts that out there.... everytime a frickin fascist goes on tv and spouts BS about average Americans being resposnible, hit home with the fact that the wealthy pay less taxes than we do and that they get a fricking tax break during a fucking war and occupation. The definition of SICK and how little these wealthy bastards care about this country.... they are TRAITORS!

Better to blame the consumer, it's all their fault. :eyes:

as did Greenspan's monetary policies to accommodate junior's huge tax cuts lead to the housing bubble. :P

Strategy? Sounds more like a conspiracy to me

Just like it was play money. And most of it went to no-bid
Halliburton contracts and to other BushCo 'friends'.

All been brainwashed into not bringing fluids with us - they might be explosives

At least when the Jewish people were rounded up en masse, they brought flasks of water with them.

We won't even be allowed that!

as if it takes a lot of "calculating" to tell people they can have what they want and not pay for it. that's not "calculating".

that's "cowardice" and "irresponsibility".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4-TL5AGHFY

:hi: