Bush’s Economic Legacy

In recent news, there has been much political profiling over what is wrong with the US economy and how it should be fixed. Inserted as little more than footnotes in most of these reports is the evidence pointing directly to the real culprit- the Bush administration and its large corporate sponsors. Not in recent memory has the American economy been so haphazardly managed to such disastrous result. Or has the management of the US economy been so haphazard? Perhaps there is a plan in effect with our economic woes. As prices on everything have gone up and the dollar has gone down, many corporations, Big Oil in particular, are seeing record profits. Yet, labor costs are falling, as workers are laid off and everyman wages continue to be unreflective of the profits seen by their employers. Has the Administration deliberately engineered a reverse re-distribution of wealth?
This is what has happened in terms of the dollar’s value.
The supply of dollars has doubled during the Bush administration; theoretically, this cuts the value of every dollar in half. Every dollar printed without a corresponding bill being removed from the system increases supply, which automatically reduces value. Interest rates have been lowered; this reduces the dollar’s value on the international market beyond what occurred with the printing of more money. The Fed has not once during this Administration purchased dollars off the currency markets. The purchasing of money by that money’s parent government reduces supply and increases demand. By not buying US dollars off the exchange, the Fed has willfully allowed inflation to find its own level and reduced the value of US currency and goods.

What this means to us.
Prices for just about everything have gone up. Corporations have, in many instances retained their profit margins, meaning that the more we pay, the more they get. Additionally, corporations have been able, thanks to increasing fuel prices, to justify increasing their prices and margins beyond the natural limitations of the inflation caused by Administration economic policy. Additionally, as prices and margins have increased, relative labor costs have decreased, because wages haven’t kept pace with all these increases, artificially inflating margins even higher. This means that while we see more of our money going into purchasing items on the market while our pay fails to compensate for the disproportionate increase in our expenses, the corporations able to benefit from this see record profits enhanced by our need or desire for their products. In short, the Bush administration has made it possible for staple-producing companies to take more of our money and increase their wealth. At no time in my life has an Administration made such a blatant effort to maximize inverted re-distribution of wealth, taking it from the poor to give to the rich. This Administration has reminded the people of America of a time in the Nineteenth Century when robber-barons held court over people forced by circumstance of poverty to accept any treatment from employers to put food on the table.