One of the great things about memoirs is that the bigger the fuck-up you are, the bigger the sale of your book will be. For example, the biggest selling Watergate memoir that wasn't Richard Nixon's was John Dean's. And his book was little but an exercise in saying "look what I did without even trying."If my metric of fucking up equalling sales is correct - and it is - President George W. Bush is going to have a book that outsells the Holy Bible. That guy didn't do anything right. Only Bush could think that he could pass a truly awesome tax cut, increase discretionary domestic spending, fight two wars, and think that it would help the economy. When history sits its ass down to document how the United States ceased to matter to anyone, President Bush is going have a central role.
Any history of the Dark Age of Bush wouldn't be complete without hearing from his final Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson. Originally brought in because Bush hadn't tried having an actual adult in charge of the money, Paulson was supposed to reverse the years of deeply irresponsible spending the American government had undertaken. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Sadly, it didn't quite work out that way. In September of 2008 the bets that Wall Street had been making without the money to back them up came due and everything immediately collapsed. If it seemed as though the world was ending, that's because it was. The American economy will never be the same again, and the world is probably better off for it.
Paulson responded the way that most people would: by throwing around hundreds of billions of dollars. By the time the Bush administration mercifully ended, Treasury and the Federal Reserve had given corporate America over a trillion dollars. Taken in isolation, that may have been necessary, but Bush had already blown all the money on bullshit. Even before the crisis started, President Bush had already doubled the national debt, which limited the freedom of the government to do much of anything.
So the government did what it had already been doing for years, it borrowed heavily from the Chinese. In perhaps the richest irony in American history, the first MBA president had to rely on the Stalinist Chinese to save capitalism from itself. Reading about Paulson, the former head of Goldman Sachs, going with hat in hand to the communists as everything around him goes to shit is going to be great.
And it's coming to a bookstore near you.
A book coming this fall will offer one of the ultimate inside takes on the
economic crisis — from former Secretary of the Treasury Henry M. Paulson,
Jr.
"I didn't come to Washington thinking I was going to leave and write a
book, but this period was so significant and there are so many insights and so
many lessons learned that I think an understanding of this extraordinary period
is important," Paulson told The Associated Press during a telephone interview
Wednesday from his office at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced
International Studies, in Washington.
I'm hoping one of the lessons he learned is "Don't let George Bush near money." He's bankrupted everything he's every touched, including the United States itself.
In fairness, I feel badly for Paulson. By the time he assumed office, everything was already on its way to being well and truly fucked. The Clinton and Bush administrations, along with successive congresses, gave toddlers handguns and found themselves shocked when it didn't turn out well. I'm not sure that Hank Paulson could have done anything other than what he did.
However, Bush and Paulson presided over the the growth of the most anti-democratic form of government in U.S history. The crisis, worsened by the incredibly reckless spending and economic polices throughout the Bush years, made the unelected and unaccountable Federal Reserve the most powerful branch of government.
Because of the idiotic policies of President Bush, the Fed - which answers to no one - has become the most important financing arm of the American government. Instead of regulating the money flow, which is what it was designed to do, the Fed is now the world's largest lender. And you don't get to vote Ben Bernanke out of office.
According to a statement issued Wednesday by Business Plus, the book will
"include Paulson's personal recollections of key moments and decisions" and
"will also include his insights on what has happened since he left office."
That should be really fun reading. If anything, President Obama is trying as hard as he can to break Bush's land speed record for making all the money vanish. In using the financial crisis as an opportunity to pass all of his political priorities, he's already well on his way to tripling Bush's already formidible deficits.
As a result, the dollar is sliding again, and that's going to drive the price of gasoline through the roof again. In the middle of the worst recession since FDR was president. That's going to drive inflation which, combined with an unemployment that will break 10%, is going to make this summer look a lot like 1979.
Several observers think that we're revisiting the 1930s. I think what's happening is worse. Wall Street is sliding into a combination of depression and socialism, while the rest of the economy is reliving the worst parts of the 1970s, with its attendant stagflation.
As I write this, Secretary Paulson's book remains untitled. I'd like to be the first to suggest that he call it "What the Fuck? I Mean, What the Fucking Fuck?" Come on, you know that you'd buy a book by a member of the Cabinet with that title.
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