Interview with Clinton RE: Bush's deficit

Now, what Americans need to understand is that that means every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina and our tax cuts, Clinton added. We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don't think it makes any sense. I think it's wrong.

Clinton also discussed bringing world leaders together to combat the world's chronic problems � including extreme poverty, global warming and religious conflicts � as well as the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort and Hillary Clinton's political future.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We're here on your initiative, and I want to talk about that, but let's begin with Katrina. President Bush has brought you into the recovery effort, but he's not taking all of your advice. You say roll back the tax cuts for the wealthy. He says no tax increase of any kind. We're spending $5 billion a month in Iraq, probably $200 billion on Katrina. Something's got to give.

CLINTON: Well, that's what I think. I think this idea � I think it's very important that Americans understand, you know, tax cuts are always popular, but about half of these tax cuts since 2001 have gone to people in my income group, the top 1 percent. I've gotten four tax cuts.

They're responsible for this big structural deficit, and they're not going away, the deficits aren't. Now, what Americans need to understand is that that means every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina and our tax cuts. We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else.

CLINTON: They should continue to oppose it, and they should make it an issue in the 2006 election, and they should make it an issue in the 2008 election. And they should hope, to goodness, for the sake of our country, that the cows don't come home before we have time to rectify it.

I mean, sooner or later, just think what would happen if the Chinese � We're pressing the Chinese now, a country not nearly rich as America per capita, to keep loaning us money with low interest to cover my tax cut, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Katrina and at the same time to raise the value of their currency so their imports into our country will become more expensive, and our exports to them will become less expensive. And by the way, we don't want to let them buy any oil companies or anything like that.

So what if they just got tired of buying our debt? What if the Japanese got tired of doing it? Japan's economy is beginning to grow again. Suppose they decided they wanted to keep some of their money at home and invest it in Japan, because they're starting to grow?

We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don't think it makes any sense. I think it's wrong.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is there anything coming out of this initiative here that you can apply directly to Katrina and the poverty we saw revealed there?

CLINTON: Oh, yes, we have raised quite a bit of money for Katrina here. And former President Bush and I, you know, we were asked to raise money. We already have $90 million to $100 million. And what we're trying to do is make sure that our money goes directly to the poorest people who have been dislodged by working with church groups and others. We're working on some mechanisms now to do that, and we'll have some announcements in the next week or so.

But I think there will be a lot of money coming forward from the federal government. A lot of it will be necessary, you know, to build the infrastructure, rebuild the fabric of life and not simply in New Orleans but along the Gulf Coast.

CLINTON: Yes; you know, keep in mind, Mississippi was devastated. Everything from a mile in Mississippi was blown down, and Alabama, but we've got to do that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Excuse me; the problems of race that were tied to poverty here, and I know you don't think there's any conscious racism at play in the response, but we saw one more time blacks and whites looked at this event through very different eyes. What can President Bush do about that, and looking back, do you think there was anything more you could have done as president?

CLINTON: Well, I think we did a good job of that. For example, we had the lowest African-American unemployment, the lowest African-American poverty rate ever recorded. We had the highest homeownership, highest business ownership, and we moved 100 times as many people out of poverty in eight years as had been moved out in the previous 12 years.

This is a matter of public policy, and whether it's race-based or not, if you give your tax cuts to the rich and hope everything works out all right, and poverty goes up, and it disproportionately affects black and brown people, that's a consequence of the action made. That's what they did in the '80s; that's what they've done in this decade.

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Again, GT brought the whole subject up about presidential integrity. I just wanted to see GT's feeling about what Clinton did, but of course, GT justified Clinton's lies which was what I fully expected. Again, Bush hasn't been proven to lie. Like I have said several times before on this board I will be the first to cry uncle if Bush is proven to have lied by investigation and that doesn't include accusations and conjecture by liberal politicians, grieving mothers, or leftist bloggers.

Clinton gave us 8 years of peace and prosperity DESPITE the opposition of the neocons throughout his administration. Bush failed over and over again DESPITE having party control of both houses. The leadership ability simply speaks for itself. Looking forward to Hill and Bill in charge again. The neocon fanatics have destroyed themselves by their own hand. So be it.

Bill Clinton left office with a 65% approval rating. George W. Bush has an approval rating of 28% and still falling.

As much as you want to blame Bill Clinton......don't forget who held the reins for the last 8 years......who let them run amuck? Why was nothing done?

Check out the mortgage failures.
Tell me which failed more, prime or subprime
Tell me what is the rate of failures under the CRA or even Bush's ADDI (which i attack alll the time)
Once again, REALITY AND THE DATA doesn't fit ya'lls claims.

Basically what happened was.. we reformed bankruptcy laws.. so that people who ran into dire straights could not restructure.

We packaged the loans into commodity derivatives. These are sorta mirror bets on the loans. Sorta..as the same loan will be sold many times in many derivative packages.. that's why the housing derivatives are worth more than all the real estate in the US. Derivatives are actually not that bad.. when a market is stable and only has to deal with natural forces. The housing market was bubbled.. partially due to low interest rates that encouraged everyone to buy, even the rich, and partially due to the CRA and the ADDI.. which did add customers to the market (helping form the bubble was the extent the CRA and the ADDI had in this mess)

All it took was a few failures to pop the bubble..and make real estate prices drop,. and mind you, it was mainly prime loans (READ not loans given to poor people and not loans under the CRA) that failed. The derivative market.,.which like I said, is really mirrors of the same loans.. cause the defaults to explode with ten times the ferocity, because one loan could effect the price of dozens of derivatives.

Really the poor and even irresponsible people .. simply did not have the economic ability to cause this mess. Pool all their money together and waste it on hookers.. it would have zero effect without help from the rich elites and their magnifying packaged derivatives.

THE CRA and ADDI both had stricter requirements than loans you got from normal banks.. both required income data.. where many prime loans did not.. they also greatly limited you on how much home you could purchase..whereas private banks did not care if you tried to buy something you could not afford.
Don't believe me?.. Look in the phone book.. call your own housing authority - you can get a loan for 106% the purchase price of a home even today.. if you're poor enough.

Ask to hear the red tape and hoops you must go through.. Heck, it is probably easier to just get a real job and earn real money than go through the FHA.

Peter Peterson. (Photo: Reuters)

Peter Peterson is coming to get your Social Security and Medicare. Peterson was the commerce secretary in the Nixon administration. He then went on to make billions of dollars as one of the top executives at the Blackstone Group, a private equity fund. Mr. Peterson is known as one of the top beneficiaries of the fund managers' tax break, through which he personally pocketed tens of millions of dollars.

Mr. Peterson has been using his Wall Street wealth to attack these social insurance programs for decades, but he recently stepped up his efforts. Last year, he spent $1 billion to endow the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to further his efforts.

In politics, it's not easy to counter the impact of $1 billion. In addition to its money, the Peterson crew enjoys the support of many important news outlets, most importantly The Washington Post, which pushes his line on both its editorial and news pages.

In fact, The Post even went so far as to identify Peterson's foundation by its boilerplate, an organization that "advocates for federal fiscal responsibility," instead of telling readers of its political leanings, the normal mode of identification for such organizations. (The Center for Economic and Policy Research was established "to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives.")

While the Peterson crew may have the money and the support of the media, the rest of us can rely on logic and ridicule to counter the attack. In this spirit, we have the Peter G. Peterson Intergenerational Fairness Tax Credit. (Mr. Peterson is apparently fond of having things named after him. In addition to his new Peter G. Peterson Foundation, he also has a think tank named after him, the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics.)

The Peterson tax credit would essentially take the Peterson crew at their word. They claim that they are worried that huge tax burdens will leave future generations worse off than the generations that preceded them.

This isn't true. There is no plausible scenario, short of war or environmental disaster, that would leave future generations worse off than their parents or grandparents. But we don't have to argue with the billionaire; let's just give future generations the option to trade places with their parents or grandparents who made out so well.

This is where the tax credit comes in. The tax credit would allow an individual to trade her after-tax income for the after-tax income that someone born 20 or 40 years sooner would have earned at the same age. For example, if someone born in 1990 believes in 2020 that their grandparents got a better deal, they would simply check off the year 1940, and they would have their taxes adjusted so that they would have the same after-tax income of a person born in 1940, when they were also age 30.

Of course, the young ones would end up big losers in this story. Real wages, on average, will be more than 50 percent higher in 2020 than they were in 1970. Even if tax rates were, on average, 5 percentage points higher, workers in 2020 will still have after-tax wages that are more than 40 percent higher than their counterparts in 1970.

This means that anyone who chose to take advantage of the intergenerational equity tax credit would end up as a big loser. That is why it can help solve the deficit problem. If people check off the tax credit, they will pay more in taxes and, therefore, increase government revenue.

It might be hard to convince large numbers of people to voluntarily pay more in taxes. This is where the Peterson Foundation comes in. They are spending huge amounts of money trying to convince young people that they are being ripped off by their parents and grandparents. They are even promoting front groups of young people to advance this effort.

With his billion dollars, Peterson could convince a huge number of gullible young people to tax advantage of the intergenerational equity tax credit. Insofar as he is successful in this effort, he can help to generate billions of dollars that can be used for items like health care, preschool education, and other pressing needs.

So, let's join efforts with Mr. Peterson and encourage his followers to take advantage of the Peter G. Peterson Intergenerational Fairness Tax Credit. There is a word for taking money from willfully ignorant young people who would deny their parents and grandparents the Social Security and Medicare benefits they need to survive: justice.

how do you know no one has anyone serving over there. You have no way of knowing that.

Matt Cooper pretty much spelled it out. You might not like it, though, because it still holds your boys accountable for their actions. So by all means, read at your own risk.

Transcript for July 17
Matt Cooper, John Podesta, Ken Mehlman, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein

I felt very uncomfortable for her. She was clearly out of her depth and Charlie really give her general questions, not detailed-oriented questions he could have asked. The blank look she had at "Bush Doctrine" was the worst; the way she tried to get a hint from Charlie about what he was talking about was squirm-inducing. A commentator noted she agreed with Obama's policy on Afghanistan rather than McCain's. I am hoping that voters will view her sympathetically as an uniformed foreign policy neophyte who simply cannot cram the vast knowledge required to deal with potentially explosive affairs in a few weeks time. I am hoping voters are willing to give her a few more years to grow into a national position. I am hoping voters will not put our children at risk by electing someone they "like" to be understudy to a man who is clearly being worn down physically by this campaign. We need well-informed, knowledgable leaders. If voters want to reward people for service and likeability, they can do so with the numerous reality shows where viewers vote for candidates.

There is a big black hole under his left ear behind that chipmunk type cheek. I kept thinking it was a trick of light, but there is a deep crevice there or something.

watched so many with all the political shows. Can't even visualize the reporter.