FuzzyLumpkins
05-19-2016, 04:35 PM
At a campaign stop in Kentucky this week, the Democratic presidential front-runner told a supporter that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, would be put in charge of "revitalizing the economy."
"I want to help bring back the economy that worked for everyone in the 1990s," Mrs. Clinton said, according to The Washington Post. "I've already told my husband, if I'm so fortunate enough to be president and he's the first gentleman, I expect him to go to work … and get incomes rising."
To some who have worked with Mr. Clinton, he combines the right balance of economic acumen and political experience for the task. The question is whether that acumen or experience has been rendered moot by the country’s changing economy and political dynamics.
The economic and political challenges are very different today than in the 1990s. Relative global peace, low oil prices, and the dot-com boom helped lift the United States economy under Clinton from a recession through one of the longest sustained periods of economic growth in the nation’s history. And through much of his presidency, Clinton was able to work constructively across the aisle with a Republican-controlled House and Senate.
The next president will adopt an economy facing wage stagnation and growing income inequality, not to mention historic levels of political polarization.
As a sign of how much has changed, two core principles of Mr. Clinton’s economic philosophy – free trade and unshackling Wall Street – are essentially what insurgent voters in both parties are fighting against.
Two of Clinton's main economic achievements were the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the passage of the Financial Services Modernization Act in 1999, a financial deregulation bill allowing banks, insurance companies, and securities firms to merge.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/0518/The-complicated-history-of-Bill-Clinton-and-the-economy
"I want to help bring back the economy that worked for everyone in the 1990s," Mrs. Clinton said, according to The Washington Post. "I've already told my husband, if I'm so fortunate enough to be president and he's the first gentleman, I expect him to go to work … and get incomes rising."
To some who have worked with Mr. Clinton, he combines the right balance of economic acumen and political experience for the task. The question is whether that acumen or experience has been rendered moot by the country’s changing economy and political dynamics.
The economic and political challenges are very different today than in the 1990s. Relative global peace, low oil prices, and the dot-com boom helped lift the United States economy under Clinton from a recession through one of the longest sustained periods of economic growth in the nation’s history. And through much of his presidency, Clinton was able to work constructively across the aisle with a Republican-controlled House and Senate.
The next president will adopt an economy facing wage stagnation and growing income inequality, not to mention historic levels of political polarization.
As a sign of how much has changed, two core principles of Mr. Clinton’s economic philosophy – free trade and unshackling Wall Street – are essentially what insurgent voters in both parties are fighting against.
Two of Clinton's main economic achievements were the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the passage of the Financial Services Modernization Act in 1999, a financial deregulation bill allowing banks, insurance companies, and securities firms to merge.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/0518/The-complicated-history-of-Bill-Clinton-and-the-economy