Feel free to name a Clinton economic policy that did not originate from the GOP majorities in the house and senate? All I know of are the tax increases late in his 2nd term, that helped cause the Tech Bubble recession.
1993 tax reform that cut deficit by $500 billion, which included taxing top earners and cutting military spending. Republicans pitched a fit, and lost. Economy wasn't destroyed as a result. In fact, we saw 7 years of uninterrupted growth, while Republicans and Clinton/Dems fought constantly over fiscal policy. Compromise was rare and grudging.
Various trade agreements, around 300. Note: He did NOT pass NAFTA, that was actually signed in by Bush 41 right at the end of his term.
Deregulated banks in 1999. That was as much his idea as Republicans. It's also one of the changes that caused the bubble and meltdown in 2008.
Bush decided to go to war based on the word of the same Intelligence Officials who are now putting out Fake News on Trump.
*bzzt* wrong
Bush came into office looking for an excuse to attack Iraq. The administration largely pushed the intelligence agencies to produce intel that supported their view. E.g. Agencies like the CIA strongly distrusted Chalabi, who had the ear of the DoD. Cheney's office tried to discredit Joe Wilson, for daring to contradict a fake report on Nigerian yellowcake sold to Iraq.
And of course, the agents who worked on the Iraq intel have basically nothing to do with current investigations into Russia, CIA put in new safeguards to prevent that from happening etc
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-the-bush-white-house/?utm_term=.43e316e70a8b
Why Did We Invade Iraq? - The Atlantic
The Community Reinvestment Act forced Banks to give Home loans to people who could not afford them. This cussed the 2008 Crash.
nope, nope, nope
CRA blocks discrimination in lending (redlining). It didn't mandate banks to loan to unfit lenders. It didn't cause mortgage originators to fill out reams of fraudulent applications. It didn't create the securitization of loans that let mortgage originators and banks package inferior loans into obscure financial instruments that buyers didn't understand. It didn't pressure ratings agencies to give good ratings in order to keep bank business; it didn't force investment banks to threaten ratings agencies with pulling their business if they didn't get rosy ratings... etc
With banks being able to dump all their bad loans on Freddy & Fanny they went hog wild with subprime lending.
nope, not even close, total bull****
Fannie and Freddie were very late to subprime. They were actually
losing market share when the bubble was expanding rapidly, because so many people wanted to buy mortgages (typically in a securitized form). They only started buying in earnest around 2005, when they realized they were missing out.
In 2006 Bush tried to Reregulate Freddy & Fanny, this might have prevented the 2008 crash but Dems blocked him.
F&F had lots of issues in the early 00s, due to poor accounting practices and the competition eating their lunch. As GSEs, they had a unique role -- soak up those 30 year mortgages, which is what they were doing whilst the bubble was expanding. They were at the end of the chain, and again they lost share as competition heated up. If F&F hadn't bought any of those bad mortgages, the bubble would still have been huge, as other entities would have just bought more of the crap.
F&F had a similar issue to Lehman. Both were caught without a chair when the music stopped, and were loaded down with underperforming loans and securities. The difference is that Lehman wanted to unload, and couldn't; whereas F&F mostly held onto mortgages and collected the income, and sold very little.
Bushes only culpability was waiting until after Democrats controlled the Senate and Congress to try to re-regulate Freddy & Fanny.
I concur Bush 43 had limited responsibility in the mess. He refused to regulate properly; he had no interest in popping the bubble early; he screwed up handling foreclosures.
The real culprit was the private markets. They were the ones that originated bad loans; generated obscure securities, which generated huge systemic risks; generated fraudulent loans; sold securities which let the originators and middle-men not just get away with no skin in the game, but bet against their own products; bought and sold all those homes, and so on.
