It's all about the economy.
An excellent analysis of the Presidential economic strategies of Bush and Clinton.
Of note:
1. Clinton relied on the tech boom to keep the economy going. The wheels were coming off when it was handed to Bush.
2. Gore would have probably gone with new energy technology, as the next tech boom subsistute.
3. Bush went with real estate.
The solution to that was typically Bush. They played a game of chicken. They made a bet that the major exporting economies of the far east would simply lend the US the money, even knowing that it would most likely be repaid at cents on the dollar. They were correct; Japan, South Korea and China ponied up and bought enough dollars to keep the US dollar from collapsing. All three are export driven mercantilist economies, and China in particular, using the mercantilist route to industrialize, was willing to pay the price later for the jobs, technology transfer and production facility transfer now.
The next problem to be solved was the commodity problem. Commodity prices had spent thirty years declining, but that downward trend had swung to the upside, led by oil and the energy sector in general.
Oil drives inflation, because it can't be easily substituted away from. In 2001 the Bush administration looked at the world and what they saw was that the only oil that could be easily brought into the market was Iraqi oil. Iraq had become the world's swing producer - or it would be, if all that oil could actually be gotten onto the market. There were two ways to do this, remove the sanctions, or invade. The Bush administration didn't trust Saddam with all the money which removing sanctions would give him. So they found an excuse to invade.
How the economy worked at the agonist.
And how it works now:
part 2
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