Jayford, the "erosion of trust" - the main pillar of business and society is trust - was fault of the aggressively greedy Neocons who intervened to "claim their rights" ("showing responsibility") abroad. You should look into Neocon elitist ideology - you will be utterly appalled. I don't think that the old-money elitists understood what they supported - and they all contributed to the meltdown now. They are hopefully getting what they deserve, and will not be able to lay the burden on you "sheeplings".
You're not being accurate. 1. Northern Rock was FTSE100 component. Not exactly the status given to a "minor thrift". 2. I didn't mention Europe. 3. Japan ALREADY had this crisis 3x worse than the States and to argue Japan can be lumped in under the heading with Europe as "has been no crisis at all" is ridiculously disingenuous. No nation on earth as seen their banking system ravaged by asset devaluation as badly as Japan. 4. I would hope America has more troubled players (in gross number) than the U.K. because our mortgage market is twelve times bigger than yours.. 5. From Bloomberg this morning: The property market may face further weakness in coming months, provoking a ``painful'' adjustment for many families, Bank of England Chief Economist Spencer Dale said last week. HBOS Plc agreed to a takeover by Lloyds TSB Group Plc after plunging home values and the financial market crisis destroyed the value of the company and added to the threat of a recession. Other residential housing data also show the slump has deepened. Home sales plunged to a 30-year record low in August, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said Sept. 9. Prices fell by the most in a quarter century, HBOS said Sept. 4. By any metric the housing slump in the U.K. is accelerating and you'll be certain to see wider pressure on lenders just like here in the States. Which still brings us to the thread: How SPECIFICLLY are Bush/Blair?Brown/Howard to blame for cratering home prices? AFTERALL home prices are HIGHER NOW than when Bush became President. How is Bush responsible for the demise of LEH or BSC or AIG? When EF Hutton failed I didn't hear anyone blame Reagan.
The rises in house prices just reflect the expansions of the economy all over the world - where consumers are (somewhere just increasingly) part of the economy.
The 'old money' elite privately despised Reagan and despises the neocons. Kovner, Perle, Podorhetz etc. are very rich, very influential and all that - but they're still Jewish. They'd have been a lot happier if Bush Sr. had done something about his boy long before it got this bad too... See, old money is really more a social thing than a political thing although that crowd is by and large donates Rep, votes Rep.
This doesn't have anything to do with either bust. Dot.com was a mega bubble based on companies not even making money. Current one is due to easy money + easy credit. The debt isn't the cause of either. BTW, Clinton didn't become a balanced budget fan until Newt and company swept congress in 1994 on a balanced budget platform. Mickey Mouse could have had a surplus with the revenues coming in form the tech boom economy. That is beside the point however. My whole point is that the president is not to blame for the booms or busts. I do agree that Bush has been a poor president though.
Old-money is not only Jews - in fact it is not even mainly Jews - but more paleoconservatives etc. Yes, they hate the Neocons - but they supported them in the attempt for "world upheaval" to stem the tide of change and "reshape" the flow to thwart the emerging economies eroding and shunting some of the flow of world resources into the US. Old-money is social networks and elitist - I know that - we all know that. The Neocons have some radical fanatical aggressive greedy outlook on the world - where they have right/obligation/responsibility to "lead" and shape things at their will without any consent of others. You should read the works of James Burnham, Cecil Rhodes, Irving Kristol (culture radical), www.anglospherechallenge.com and about the Heartland, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve and Charles Murray too - as well as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerial_state ... oh, and www.pbs.org If you want to understand social elitist "bias" - look at the research fields of American Enterprise Institute www.aei.org and the RAND Corporation. AEI is all about ideology while RAND is about social control and other scientific fields of the intersection into economy, psychology and society. See things from the perspective of admission to Ivy league - scholarships , research grants , career , promotions , positions , endorsements , managing and lobbying. The social and economic Darwinism is essentially corruption itself and cancerous growth tapping into as much as it can - cannibalistic hierarchical pyramid schemes - which are ultimately not sustainable - and go through cycles of greatness/domination and destruction/failure - because such systems polarize everything in contact with it because of its corruptive nature and destruction of trust/integrity. It is a game of becoming the biggest fish and a rat race towards the top where the elite enjoy their benefits. Then you will understand geopolitical strategies much better when politicians "inspire" through their Neocon priesthoods or other elitist-backed rhetoric. Sustainable growth is different - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem . Business is harmonic and growing through the establishment and growth of trust systems and structures.
Actually, European economies are much more conservative than the US economy. There is much more distrust between the various European economies, so they keep their internal trust structures stronger. The sparse trust they develop is debated and negotiated through lengthy discussions and the gathering of public support back home before they commit to large changes. Therefore the trust and sustainability of this process and trust is also much stronger. In other words - the democratic processes are working in Europe. This is a fundamental systemic difference about European and US socioeconomics. The US population on the other hand accepts silently the shaping of its entire economy by an elitist corrupt priesthood ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_politics
Also, the whole US society is so aligned into this pyramid scheme and everyone fighting to get to the top, become the bigshot fish... I think this is not something that will change easily - and the corruption, THAT IS the system itself, won't go away by itself. The cycle of greatness and failure is what drives the motion, I guess.
Except that Clinton also dropped the budget deficit in 1993, before Newt et al were in power, and each subsequent year including 1994 (which Newt et al didn't impact the budget for. Their first budget impact would have been 1995.)