Cheney says Greenspan is 'off the mark': WSJ

[rodeodance]

Source: affp

Cheney says Greenspan is 'off the mark': WSJ

54 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Vice President Dick Cheney wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial Wednesday that former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan's criticism of President George W. Bush's economic record was "off the mark."


Greenspan, who during his tenure as Fed chief was famously tight-lipped, accused Bush in a new memoir of abandoning Republican principles on the economy, and slammed his tax cuts and increased spending.

"Greenspan argues that President Bush's economic and budget policies have been fiscally irresponsible. I've known and admired Alan for years, and I believe he was a great chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. But I think his assessment is off the mark," Cheney said in the opinion piece.

"The combined effects of recession and national emergency could have been devastating for America's economy. Yet President Bush's tax cuts-following through on a promise he had made to the voters-resulted in a shallower recession, a faster recovery, and a platform for growth that remains sturdy to this day," Cheney insisted.

Bush himself earlier shrugged off the Greenspan jab telling Fox television "I would say that the record, our fiscal record, is admirable and good."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070919/pl_afp/useconomybank_070919132043;_ylt=AgICFDwwIU55jDVL3D6mtY.s0NUE

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Bush has the taxpayer plastic-----"admirable and good."

[Nickster]

1. How long until Shooter calls Greenspan a tool of the DNC and a far left loony?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. and then invited him to go quail hunting

.

[LynnTheDem]

3. EVERYONE on the planet is WRONG...except cheney the dick.

Psychopath; how to identify.

[Bitwit1234]

4. So can we add cheney to the psychic as well as the psychotic

group. He seems to know everything,damn shame he didn't stop the Twin Towers attack.

[0007]

5. Everyone's out of step except junior and his dick ...

Allen don't shit from Shinola

[Acadia Blue]

16. LOL Cheney the dick!!

[gratuitous]

6. So that's why we went from a surplus to record deficits?

You know, Mr. Cheney, I have a funny view of economic health and stability: If you're running a surplus and paying down your debt, you're doing well; if you're in debt up to your eyeballs and you're running record deficits, you're doing poorly. By that measure, you're doing very poorly indeed. And despite your opinion that deficits don't matter, they do indeed. Just take a gander at the bursting bubble known as housing. And what happens when your Chinese pals decide that they can get a better return on their investment by buying up securities other than American debt?

Please find yourself another country to be part of, you sneering toad.

[Acadia Blue]

17. Bernie Sanders asked Greenspan some really good questions

that only a real liberal would ask. All the blue dog pieces of DLC garbarge just let Greenspan roll by. When you give the rich a big tax break, all you are doing is helping China. That is where the factories are now. Duh??? How dumb are republican rank and file who are not rich? Really really dumb as ____.

[rog]

7. But Greenspan pretty much endorsed Bush's tax cuts.

So I don't really understand Cheney's outrage. I guess he's just upset that a light has been shined on the administration. What I hear Greenspan saying is that, if Bush hadn't come along to erase the surplus and create a huge deficit, the Bed would have had to do something. After all, more debt means more $$$ for the REAL fatcats.

From his News Hour interview last night, in which he commented on the Clinton surplus, and the "danger" of running out of debt.


JIM LEHRER: The other allegation that was made by some on the other side was that you did a favor to his son, President George W. Bush, by semi-endorsing his tax cuts. What's the story there?

ALAN GREENSPAN: Well, I tried to explain it in some detail.

JIM LEHRER: I know.

ALAN GREENSPAN: I had always been very much against federal budget deficits as a corrosive force in finance, and I never really confronted the issue of, what would happen if we ran out of debt, meaning if we had a long period of federal surpluses?

And, indeed, starting in 2000-2001, all of the experts, including those at the Federal Reserve said, because of a structural change in productivity, we were now confronted with a rapid and continuing rise in a surplus which would, by 2006, virtually effectively eliminate outstanding debt.

JIM LEHRER: The deficit.

ALAN GREENSPAN: The problem would be is that, if that occurred in 2006, the surplus would have to be employed to purchase private assets. And having observed the way Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson behaved, the thought of having the government in control of vast claims on the private sector, including equities, I thought was a very dangerous possibility.

And so I thought the only sensible thing to do at that point is to try to bring the surplus down to zero, at the point when debt disappeared, so we would not be required to build up any assets. And that could have been accomplished with what George W. Bush's tax plan essentially was suggesting, but also what the Democratic leadership's tax plan could be.

And I essentially said in the book, which is true, that I would have given the same testimony if Gore were elected president as I did at that particular point. And there was a great deal of concern that I had opened up Pandora's Box or something like that, which I thought was a little cynical, because I was granted all this huge power, and I said, "Now, wait a second. Nobody listens to me on the budget deficit, or on PAYGO, or other technical issues which constrain the budget. All of a sudden, I become all-powerful."

But most importantly, nobody read my testimony in full, because of I'd had all sorts of caveats about if the tax cut -- if the deficit -- I'm sorry, if the surplus didn't continue, there would be a trigger it to change the law. So I thought that was a rather...

JIM LEHRER: Not guilty, in other words. Not guilty plea, sir?

ALAN GREENSPAN: I'm not guilty.


Perhaps what he implied in his book ... I'll have to read it ... is that the "trigger" didn't go off and that there was an "over-correction." Perhaps that's Greenspan's criticism.

.rog.

[tabasco]

8. What are Moe, Curly, and Larry's opinions?

I value their financial opinions more the "deficits don't matter" Dick.

[Mountainman]

9. Cheney says, "Hey I'm doing well, isn't everyone?"

"I got a tax cut, my Halliburton holdings are increasing and I moved my investments to Dubai."

[trusty elf]

10. If shooter thinks things are going so well...

why did he recently dump 10-25 million dollars into a European bond fund, I wonder?

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney07052006.html

[truthisfreedom]

11. I wonder if bushco ever suspects the public isn't buying their "let's pat ourselves on the back"

route? The one that they engage in EVERY TIME someone leaves this administration and reveals what's really going on?

Does Joe Blow ever think about the vast number of people who have left this administration completely aghast at what was going on inside?

[llmart]

12. Interesting use of the phrase.....

"off the mark" by an idiot who shoots someone in the face.

Does anyone even listen to this asswipe?

[goforit]

13. LOL!!! Greenspan hits Cheney's achilles heal!!!

[yellowcanine]

14. So Cheney thinks he knows better than Greenspan? His arrogance knows no bounds. The neocons don't

like independent thinking no matter who it is coming from. If the assessment doesn't fit their agenda it must be wrong.

[damntexdem]

15. And, after all, Darth Cheney is acknowledged as the financial wizard.

So, who's this Greenspan to challenge him on economics? ;-)

[0rganism]

18. the main question I have is, why did Greenspan come clean at this point?

Of course Cheney's denial comes as no surprise; his job in this case is to sow enough doubt to enable the rightwing authoritarians to happily continue on supporting what they've been taught is "admirable and good." Whenever someone says, "isn't this what Greenspan warned us about?" they'll just fire back, "His assessment was off the mark."

Reagan's version of supply-side economics was always part of the evolving Republican plan to destroy the fiscal viability of a domestically-involved federal government. Greenspan knew this, he was a willing participant for decades, and probably did more to implement the monetary policies of their "drown it in a bathtub" strategies over that time than any other single person in government. So why is he dropping the act now?

The only conclusion I can draw is that the bushistas and their congressional enablers have gone so far over the destructive edge that even a believer like Greenspan can't take it anymore. On the horizon, he sees something far nastier than an end to meaningful domestic federal involvement -- something extremely dangerous even for big businesses, something on the order of a true destabilization of central government through overwhelming debt.

I don't know what form it will take, but when the architect starts publicly dissing the skyscraper he designed, I'm thinking a collapse is imminent. :scared:

[Roland99]

19. Sounds like Greenspan just hit a bullseye then!!

[paparush]

20. "Last Throes" "Turned the Corner" "Off the Mark" Cheney is such a dickhead.