Well, we are OT so lets make the best of it...

Armorbeast, same thing was said for the Regan tax cuts. They did not turn the economy around for a decade and Clinton took the credit.

Things would be worse if there had been no W.Bush tax cut. I agree with you that Bush/Repubs show no sign of cutting spending, however. They should cut taxes AND cut spending. Short of such an outbreak of true free-market capitalism, we need a Democratic President forced to act like a fiscal conservative, a la Clinton when Greenspan went behind closed doors in 1993 and said, basically, "Paul Volker and I just put an end to gov't-caused inflation of the 70s-80s. Regan helped with his tax cuts. The downside is, the economy is still crippled; these remedies need another decade to take hold. You won't be able to execute your socialism. Balance the budget instead." Clinton had to go along. It helped that the Dems lost control of Congress, so Clinton could not get antsy and attempt massive new socialism anyway. It worked. Clinton was in office for a long time, and at the end of his term the 20-year remedy 1979-1999 took hold.

But The Great Boom of Prosperity that took place in the late 90s was wrecked not by Clinton or either Bush...it was Greenspan -- now alarmed by the outbreak of a hyper-hot economy -- attacking the "exhuberance" of the dotcomers with his six sledghammer interest hikes over 1999-2000 which, while it did finally destroy the dot com boom, also savaged the normal economy, which had taken 20 years to heal. Greenspan should have let any dotcoms which were 'vapor' explode on their own, caveat emptor, but no, he had to assert control. We are still attempting to recover from that.

Yes we have deficits, due to the cost of the War and the continued federal out-of-control spending, and moreso by the continued controlling behavior of Greenspan, but the Euro-gap is caused mostly by unproductivity in Europe. The Euro is inflated, not "strong".

[tremendously anti-European sarcastic paragraph, a real killer, self-censored here. I can take flames, but I don't want to get TOSed.]

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