Mark Knows It All

To quote the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, America’s chickens are coming home to roost. Use whatever euphemism you want, the events in the nation’s financial markets indicate that the party is finally over. In the late 1990’s, Bill Clinton rode the crest of the computer productivity wave to a national surplus. Contrary to the politicos’ efforts to make you think it was his economic policies that generated the surplus, it was the explosion of productivity resulting from the digital age. Bush came to office as the Clinton boom was slowing down, and presided over a terrorist induced recession, resulting in an easy-money monetary policy and the now collapsing housing boom and resultant financial crisis. Of course, there is plenty of blame to go around for the Freddie and Fannie mess, the unintended consequence of the Community Redevelopment Act as amended under Clinton and reinforced under Bush. It required lenders to loan money to nonqualified borrowers in the government’s noble, but now fai...