"For quite some time now, after eight remarkable years, our economy has been experiencing difficulty. Powerful positives, including a series of Federal Reserve rate cuts and the budget surplus, have been competing with powerful negatives, like and the troubled economic situation in Europe, Japan and the emerging markets."
Not surprisingly, Rubin draws no connection between those "eight remarkable years," which included his stint as secretary of the treasury, and the "excessive corporate and consumer debt, [plus] overinvestment in some industries" that plague us today. As should have been obvious at the time, the ballyhooed prosperity of the Clinton Administration was built on sand; the terrorist attack has merely catalyzed inevitable economic deterioration that was already well under way.
Even more alarming, of course, the 9/11 attack suggests that most if not all of the billions the US has invested in so-called national defense over the last 20+ years has been wasted.
In every way from at least Reagan onward, the US has truly been a fool's paradise.
Carl
_________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp