The answer is that he never was a Maestro. That the true Directors were in the Clinton White House and that they played him like a piano. The society folks including his wife, were taken in since they all believe that the market and economics is their expertise. Just listen to Cudlow and Kramer or the "Ideologue" and the "Pragmatist". Cudlow says, hold on to the stock it will eventually come back and then it craps. Kramers says watch, become an expert and sell. Cudlow appeals to the folks who believe that Social Security can be run by factory workers when they get home and are too tired to play with the children or those idled by automation. While Kramer shows us truly how difficult the market is and that it is a place for professionals. Can you imagine 50% of the workforce losing their Social Security because of a long wave in the market and our NOT having a revolution? You had better have that homeland security in place for sure and NO civil service so that loyalty is solely to the Commander in Chief. Sounds like China. So who are these alleged Americans who will put the rest of us in harm's way just to fill their pockets?
REH P.S. those of us who are old enough to remember LBJ should also remember that he promised to have prosperity and fight the Vietnam War as well. "Fool me once!" ----- Original Message ----- From: Karen Watters Cole To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 1:05 PM Subject: Out of the closet What do you think? Is Greenspan just trying to help lower The Anxiety Index? Other economic/monthly reports links below. KWC The Maestro Is a Hack How Alan Greenspan has become a Bush puppet By Daniel Gross at slate.com @ http://slate.msn.com/?id=2074429 Posted Thursday, November 21, 2002, at 2:35 PM PT Excerpts: Last week, a member of Congress asked Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to assess investors' views about the administration's long-term fiscal plan. His answer: "That there isn't one." Greenspan, an alarmist about deficits in the '90s, didn't seem particularly troubled by this concession. Indeed, his blasé attitude toward the Bush red ink marks a sharp reversal from a decade ago, when he was an aggressive voice for fiscal restraint. It also signals a shift in Greenspan's role from goo-goo noodge to partisan hack. The Fed has traditionally distanced itself from fiscal policy, leaving questions about taxing and spending to the authorities in the executive and legislative branches. But in the early '90s, as deficits mounted and a Democrat took control of the White House, Greenspan injected himself directly into fiscal policy-making. In December 1992, he told President-elect Clinton that reducing the massive deficit inherited from President Bush would lower interest rates and revive the economy. Indeed, as Bob Woodward writes in Maestro-and, actually, in The Agenda, too-Greenspan even provided a specific figure. The administration should reduce the 1997 budget deficit by at least $140 billion. When such a plan was introduced, Greenspan naturally endorsed it. In 1993, when not a single Republican voted for Clinton's budget, "the only real Republican support had come from Greenspan." Fast-forward to 2002. As deficits-short- and long-term alike-re-emerged, and as proposals surface weekly to make them larger, Greenspan no longer finds it necessary to act as a counterweight on fiscal policy. And I can't help but think it has something to do with who is in charge. In the spring of 2001, Greenspan-along with many Democrats-supported President Bush's proposed tax cuts, which were designed to expire in 2011. At the time, when the 10-year surplus was still projected to be more than $6 trillion, it didn't seem entirely reckless. But as the projected surplus swiftly evaporated, and as the economy sputtered, the White House and Congress either enacted or advocated a series of measures that would exacerbate rather than improve the long-term fiscal situation-the farm bill, a prescription drug plan, fixing the alternative minimum tax, etc. Bizarrely, the Democrats, clinging to their slim majority in the Senate, emerged as the only serious force in Washington for fiscal discipline. Now they're gone. And the new regime simultaneously wants to slash taxes and lard up national security bills with pork, pass a new entitlement program for prescription drugs, and embark on an expensive overhaul of Social Security. In sum, as I've argued recently, the Republican regime could swiftly launch us back into an era of seemingly permanent structural deficits, just when the baby boomers are set to retire. This should be the moment Greenspan starts hectoring the free-spenders. But in the recent debates over spending and tax cuts, Greenspan has emerged more as a cheerleader than a foil. On Wednesday, he mouthed President Bush's argument for making the slow-motion Bush tax cut permanent-even though he admitted the economic rationale underlying it was wrong. .Today, spendthrift Republicans control both the House and Senate-on Meet the Press Nov. 10, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott spoke blithely about passing a prescription drug benefit ($380 billion) and fixing the alternative minimum tax, which could take another few hundred billion. Sen. Don Nickles, an aficionado of "dynamic scoring" (the favored euphemism for supply-side economics), is replacing deficit hawk Sen. Pete Domenici at the helm of the Budget Committee. The White House, which has yet to veto a spending bill, believes that the answer to every economic woe is a tax cut. Nowhere in the precincts of power is there to be found a single voice for fiscal discipline, short-term or long-term. For that reason, alone, Greenspan should err on the side of fiscal caution rather than the side of fiscal hedonism. Greenspan's critics have long suspected him of being a hard-core Republican ideologue. But during the '90s, when he seemed to work hand-in-glove with the Clinton administration, he morphed into an elder statesman, seemingly above politics and partisanship and above reproach. Now, however, the Maestro has become little more than a hand puppet of the Bush administration." Everybody seems to be quoting from or alluding to Kenneth Pollack's' book The Gathering Storm these days. Also check out More Furrowed Brows. Is a Double Dip Ahead? @ http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/25/business/25ANXI.html See the full results of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve's survey at www.phil.frb.org/econ/spf/ index.html. Samuelson: Economic Impact of War @ http://www.msnbc.com/news/839098.asp?0dm=-148K Excerpt: "Another dark assessment comes from Yale economist William Nordhaus, writing in The New York Review of Books. He says that a worst case (including a long-term occupation and reconstruction of Iraq) could cost $1.6 trillion over a decade. Only about half this total would be federal budget costs; the rest would reflect slightly higher oil prices and slower economic growth. "It seems likely," he says, "that Americans are underestimating the economic commitment involved in a war." (One omission in his math: in the next decade, U.S. GDP should exceed $100 trillion; even his cost is less than 2 percent of the national income.) Life after major wars is not like life before them. They change-for better or worse-the political, economic and psychological landscape in basic ways. A quick and successful war against Iraq might transform the Middle East by empowering Arab moderates. A long and messy war might destabilize the region and, by showing that U.S. power is exaggerated, abet terrorism, tensions and conflicts around the world. Pax Americana would recede; a power vacuum would develop." Karen East of Portland, West of Mt Hood Outgoing Mail Scanned by NAV 2002
