This blog contains posts and comments written by students in Dr. Tufte's economics classes at Southern Utah University.
3/31/2009
White House to Accept Some Blame for Economic Crisis
An interesting article was published in the Wall Street Journal this week. http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/03/31/white-house-to-accept-some-blame-for-economic-crisis/?mod=rss_WSJBlog?mod=marketbeat. It is entitled Real Time Economics, White House to accept blame for Economic Crisis. This is a surprising article to find in our day and time. It talks about a statement that a White House Official made. He stated how the White House was accepting some of the responsibility for the economic situation that we are currently in. The article does not specify exactly for how much they find themselves at fault for, but just the fact that they are accepting any at all and actually admitting it is quite amazing! He tells how part of the problem is believed to be in the weakness of the regulatory system of our country. This confession came about due to accusations by other large Economy countries that the US is running some sort of a "free-wheeling style capitalism" that led to the crisis crushing their economies, and they are now looking to punish the US for this. Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said, "This crisis was caused by no black man or woman or by no indigenous person or by no poor person. This crisis was fostered and boosted by irrational behavior of some people that are white, blue-eyed. Before the crisis they looked like they knew everything about economics, and they have demonstrated they know nothing about economics." Plans have been made to expand the scope of regulations to any institution, market or product that's important to the international financial system.
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It would seem that some countries might have forgotten that this is a global recession, not only because of the United States and their policies. It seems that individuals are still living in a different state than we currently are, comparing people to “white, blue-eyed”, is a stereotype that would not fit even the smallest of regions. As far as the white house accepting blame, that is the easiest step in the process, people accept blame merely to move the spot light onto a different matter. If and when the white house can pin down a matter, that would then mean they are figuring it out. This is not due to one thing; this is due to many little things that caused everyone to collapse. As I said before, not all of the little things are the United States fault; other countries have helped to contribute problems to the world wide recession we are facing. One example that it’s not all just completely the United States fault would be that other countries are trying to create stimulus’s as well. Maybe when people stop looking at just their front door steps and walk around the world, we might figure out the global recession.
-1 on Calvin for spelling errors.
There are two positions here: one is good and the other is crap.
The good one is that someone in the government accepted some blame. That's refreshing. Although, I have the same doubts about this claim than their typical one that the "grew the economy". More cynically, the only reason they said this is that the election is just passed, instead of close in the future.
The part about blaming the U.S. is crap. I'm sorry: unless you took this position before the economy crashed, you're just a jerk for assigning blame this way. It's just sour grapes. No one made the citizens and institutions of any of these countries invest here. As a matter of fact, why on earth did they invest here if we're such bad guys?
The U.S. is about 1/3 of the world economy. I have no problem with accepting 1/3 of the blame. Anything more needs to be argued very carefully. I'm willing to listen, but the silence is deafening.
And obviously ... Landon said all of this first ... so I just second his point.
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