US President George W. Bush said in an interview Tuesday he was forced to sacrifice free market principles to save the economy from “collapse.”
“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” Bush told CNN television, saying he had made the decision “to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse.”
Bush’s comments reflect an extraordinary departure from his longtime advocacy for an unfettered free market, as his administration has orchestrated unprecedented government intervention in the face of a dire financial crisis.
“I am sorry we’re having to do it,” Bush said.
But Bush said government action was necessary to ease the effects of the crisis, offering perhaps his most dire assessment yet of the country’s economy.
“I feel a sense of obligation to my successor to make sure there is not a, you know, a huge economic crisis. Look, we’re in a crisis now. I mean, this is – we’re in a huge recession, but I don’t want to make it even worse.”
At a G20 summit last month in Washington, Bush resisted some proposals for global financial regulation and argued free market principles still held true despite the global economic downturn.
And administration officials have also referred to the primacy of the free market when discussing a possible government bailout for the troubled US auto industry.
In the interview, Bush said that a “disorganized bankruptcy” of the carmakers could create “enormous” economic difficulties.
But the US president has yet to announce how his administration will proceed amid calls from Detroit automakers and Democrats for a bailout drawing on funds set aside for financial firms.
i have no problem with economic collapse… why do i feel so alone? let the financial institutions fail, let the auto industry implode, let them all burn. let the dollar go the way of the dodo. we’re never going to strengthen our frail nation without something big. let it all fall, and we can rebuild the economy stronger than it was.
our economy is a gambling addict. like all addicts, it needs to hit rock bottom before it can muster the courage to come back up. if daddy keeps giving it money to stick in the video poker machine, it’s just gonna keep on fucking itself.
What caused the last depression was government meddling to fix the problem
All this, is a calculated step toward socialism, just like when he sold us out at the UN meeting shortly after the stimulus, giving oversight to a UN committee in order to prevent such things from happening again
The trick of capitalism is socialism has been played on America. However I think the socialist scum are underestimating the american gunowner. The Bill of Rights has nothing to do with sporting purposes! Prepare for the inevitable history repeating itself BS.
“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” Bush told CNN television, saying he had made the decision “to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse.”
What honesty? He’s trying to save his rich friends. Let the free market work, failed banks would be replaced by other healthy banks, and use the fund to support those healthy banks.
Agreed that at least he’s being honest…wrong but honest. However this cronyism isn’t going to save the economy. It’s simply going to set the stage for more and more, meanwhile our dollars are going to turn to crap once the demand is down from everybody going liquid.
I’ve said it before, new growth is a beautiful thing…but first the forest has to burn. If we had let the banks and the auto companies fail(for that matter any business that can’t stay afloat on it’s own,) there would be hard times for sure, but in five years we would have made the transition towards creating real capital by producing, saving, and exporting goods.
We’re treating the economic illness with the same bad medicine that got us sick in the first place. Americans buying homes/cars/stocks that they couldn’t afford, borrowing the money to do it, meanwhile producing nothing to pay off the debt.
It’s not a sound theory, but according to the economists that are pro-bailout, nobody needs to save money…buy a house and let it save for you.
So we’ve decided to give money to inefficient industries and businesses, that can’t pay their own bills…so that they can continue to be inefficient, and go further into debt…and we’re going to pay for it, by putting the entire country into (more) debt.
In all the econ classes I took, this never once came up as a “good idea”.
We’ve had socialism for quite some time, we’re now taking that road towards fascism. Well, actually we’ve started on that road awhile ago, just starting to speed things up.
Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and an egalitarian society characterized by equal opportunities for all individuals and a fair or egalitarian distribution of wealth.
From where I stand, that doesn’t describe the state of affairs in the US, at least not yet. But govt ownership of private industries like the financial markets and soon the auto industry is surely another step in that direction. This is some scary s#!t.
Complete and utter failure is plenty of incentive for businesses to curtail the use of unsafe and unethical business practices. That’s capitalism WORKING. Yes, things in such a situation would be bad in the short term, but it would improve a hell of a lot quicker than it will now (assuming it even does). The government stepping in and saying “Well you’re too big, so we can’t let you fail” just lets them think they can keep getting away with it and the cycle continues. The worst part about it all is they are committing grand fuckin’ larceny with OUR money, the businesses that put us all in this economic situation in the first place are reaping the benefits, and the general population has to bend over and take it in so many different ways it’s unbelievable. Basically, we are being forced into financial feudalism. In another decade or two our country will be so financially destitute that pretty much everyone will be working just to pay the bills, and no one will ever really “own” anything. Everything will be the property of the banks and the government.
dude… that’s exactly how it is now. nobody pays cash for trucks and houses… nobody even pays cash for their guns/plasma tvs/boots/BILLS/gasoline/food/sex toys/breath mints… even contractors are getting POS systems and taking credit cards, now. I’m in the process of buying a system myself, in fact.
hah… the only reason i pay cash for everything is because i maxed out all my credit cards years ago.