He was the most anti-business President in our lifetime.
From your end of the spectrum, that's what I would expect.
Bush left behind the worst and most complex financial/business disaster of our lifetimes, but he was better.
Okay, sure.
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Bush set Obama up with TARP. Obama gave us ObamaCare and the Obama Stimulus...the first was a job killer and the second under performed so badly they had to bullshit us on the numbers with "Jobs Saved or Created"!
What I found telling about Obama was what his next big policy goal was going to be...passing Cap & Trade legislation. THAT would have been devastating to the US economy!
Bush
had to stand back and allow TARP to be crammed through because he had no choice. The economy was in abject collapse.
Bush celebrated and trumpeted the phony real estate numbers all the way through his presidency. He celebrated and trumpeted the lack of regulations that allowed the ratings agencies to
sell AAA
(Treasury-level!) ratings for the absolute shit securities that brought us down. He celebrated and trumpeted the lack of regulations that allowed AIG to sell zillions of dollars in credit default swaps (insurance) on those shit securities with zero (0) dollars in reserve for them. Hey, what could go wrong?!
He happily turned a blind eye to the
absolutely insane loans being offered and sold by mortgage companies, who knew they'd have them packaged and sold as (holy shit, wtf) AAA by noon the next day. He loved the lack of regulation that allowed the banks to SHORT the very shit securities they were SELLING as AAA. He smiled as Alan Greenspan - who would later say "oops, shit, sorry, my bad"
- aggressively refused to regulate critical derivatives markets even though he had the authority to do so, even though CFTC Chairperson Brooksley Born herself BEGGED him to.
In other words, Bush took credit for the all supposed good stuff, and then handed a steaming pile of shit to his successor. Nothing Obama did after that, as blatantly naive as he was about business, caused as much damage to both businesses and individuals as Bush did. Not even close.
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