Americans have what must be the shortest memory of any modern society, eagerly placing the blame on the nearest figurehead available, failing to use reason and rational thinking to seek the root of any problem.  Our society has long relied on storytellers to give us the details on a platter, and for us to follow blindly without looking into history and precedent set to determine where the truth may be hidden behind a veil of lies and misdirection.

Take the economy for instance.  America blames Bush for our economic turmoil, much to the public’s own ignorance.  He provided a convenient scapegoat for all the troubles in foreign policy with the wars around the world to our dismay at our economic stability on the domestic front.  His goofy grin and poor public speaking ability allowed the populace to mock him at will, believing him to be incompetent.  Unfortunately, competence does not always come hand in hand with charisma, otherwise Obama would be the savior a blind America has hoped for and yet has not seen.

The root of our economic problems sits before our former President Bush.  Our problem rests in a man known for his fiasco in Yugoslavia, his bombing of the no-fly zone in Iraq, and the military SNAFU he caused in Somalia.  Oh, and he is also known for not knowing the definition of the word ‘is’ and of ‘not’ having sexual relations with one Monica Lewinsky.

Yes, America’s herpes has come out of remission once again: Bill Clinton.

If Bush failed America through his inability to stop the economic collapse, then Clinton failed America by sticking our economic screwdriver into the wrong socket.  Everyone remembers how well the economy did under Clinton (which only happened due to the Reaganomics that pulled the country out of a recession).  Clinton needed only to sit back and let it happen and reap the benefits of a ‘successful’ presidency.  Yet he didn’t sit back as much as he should have, and instead let three major mistakes to open a cut in our strong economic hide, and that wound festered for a decade before finally becoming infected and taking the system down.

Looking back, 1997: Taking the housing market on first, Clinton allowed for tax modifications on homes greater than $500,000, effectively taking a market that was once priced on supply and demand and opening the floodgates for price gouging, uncontrollable speculation and inflating home prices far beyond their actual worth (as we have seen since with the recent housing crash).

Then in 1998: Doing what Clinton did best in his term, outside of his feeble attempts at leading, I think is best describe by MSN Money:

“The second mistake was one of inaction. In 1998, Long-Term Capital Management’s use of derivatives and leverage required a massive $3.6 billion hedge fund bailout organized by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. After the fiasco rocked the markets, the administration was on the spot. Would it push for tighter regulation of this new form of investment vehicle? Would it rein in the derivatives markets?

Alan Greenspan and Arthur Levitt, then the chairmen of the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission, respectively, and Clinton’s Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, all counseled against it to varying degrees. No action was taken.”

The biggest and final mistake worth mentioning, however, was allowing brokerages and banks to operate as one big, happy, manipulative and misguided family.  Having worked for Citigroup at one time, I can give testimony to how the company believed to be on top of the world, defeating the Glass-Steagall legislation that had prevented things like Traveller’s Group and Citicorp from merging. Through this action, and the creation of Citigroup, the Clinton administration created new legislation to allow mergers to take place and form super conglomerates.  

We all know how that ended now don’t we?  Letting these banks hold and manage, then recommend risky investments and give loans to people without the income to support their mortgages when the interest rates skyrocketed into a housing market that was inflated like a cancer tumor, it created the perfect storm for economic distress.

And now, Clinton’s infectious legacy has once again come back to lay waste to the American way of life.