Originally posted by: tcsenter
Here come the people saying that Clinton had absolutly nothing to do with the sucess of the economy and that Bush has nothing to do with it tanking right now.
Well perhaps you can explain in "cause and effect" detail exactly how Clinton 'made' the stock markets go up and how Bush 'made' the stock markets go down, especially in light of the fact that the markets began crashing in Q1 of 2000, well before the Presidential election which ocurred in Q4 of 2000, and while Clinton was still in office? Didn't think so.
The fact is, even a 1st year economics or finance major understands that the bull market of the 90's was largely a paper economy, a mirage based on the speculative hope of great returns from an internet business model which turned-out to be fatally flawed.
There is no possible way that the balance sheets of JDS Uniphase could justify a stock price which would rocket from $40 to $293 in two years, with no fewer than FOUR stock splits between 1997 and 2001.
Such gains are irrational, unsustainable, and moreover, should have been a huge 'red flag' causing investors to question their validity. I'll go as far as to say the fundamentals of prudent investing dictate that such gains are IMPOSSIBLE except when driven purely by baseless and foolish speculation.
Investors were throwing money hand-over-fist at companies which had not yet turned a nickel of profit and nobody stopped to think whether or not the company ever would turn a profit by analyzing the viability of its economic model.
Certainly nobody in positions of responsibility and public trust, like Clinton's SEC, Treasury, FTC, or Commerce appointments, nor his economic advisors, tried to sound any sort of alarms urging caution or restraint. Why should he? Clinton aimed to ride this economy into the history books, the costs be damned, hoping to permanently associate his administration with 'the greatest economic boom in the history of the United States'. The economy almost held-out for him, but this 'House of Cards' began falling during the last year of his administration.
So what did this little stunt for political gain cost US investors? Oh...not much...something like $3 trillion dollars.
Do you
really want to give Clinton credit for the 90's economy? Because that would mean, Clinton is also responsible for its collapse. I'm a reasonable person, I'll let Clinton off, since it probably wouldn't have done any good had his administration tried to urge restraint and sound the alarm, as Greenspan once commented, how do you derail the unanimous will of fifty million investors?
But if you insist on giving Clinton credit for the 90's economy, I'll be happy to let you. He can have the credit - but he'll have to take all of it.
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