Clearly, the monkey currently occupying the oval office is incapable of such thinking, since the economy has gone to hell in a handbasket during his regime.
Many intelligent people, even those who vehemently disagree with current policy, will concede that Bush is no monkey. Silly name calling like that is the childish rhetoric of the left wing ignorants and I presume you're not one of those because I've gotten the impression over my months here that you're not a dumb person. When you say things like that, it's hard to recognize let alone honor your credibility... and I mean that more as a blanket statement to all as opposed to any one individual.
No one person, monkey or not, nor country, singularily controls their own economy. It has not been that way for nearly 15 years since global economies became interconnected overnight. I'm degreed in both finance and economics and work for a large international borkerage firm. We look, study, and discuss these thing everyday.
Two of the most obvious impacts to our economy were gas prices and the subprime/housing debacle... neither of which are controlled by the governement lest you think otherwise. Capitalism and free-market capitalism in a free nation are two very very different things. There is a certain self-policing that's assumed and when that breaks down, sometimes the country's economy will be punished. Downturns, even recessions are natural and needed part of the economic cycle. Gas prices are largely driven by two things and two things only: demand and futures trading... not the government and not the "big oil" companies. Most of the stereo equipment you buy has a greater profit margin on it than what the oil companies make.
The housing issue was created by overzealous lending due to low interest rates. This in turn caused priced to skyrocket because suddenly you could borrow more money for the same cost than you could the year before, so people didn't care that they may have been paying more for a house than it was worth. As this continued, speculators entered the fray and drove prices even higer... again... a supply and demand phenom. Oddly enough, the institution in most peril right now is the Fanny Mae/Freddie Mac institutions because they were far more irresponsible than most other lenders and circumvented the conversative principles they were governed by for profit's sake. If you want to point fingers, you may want to keep them in your pocket if you're a Bush Basher because many on the boards of those agencies are populated with several high ranking former Clinton advisors.
There are many to blame for our current economic situation. To some degree, the Adminisitration, to some degree the Congress who can actually exert quite a bit of infuence (yet this current congress by all accounts is the most inactive in nearly 20 years), private industry, and individuals (like my neighbor who paid $500K for his house and is losing it because he can't understand how his $900/month pmt went to $2800 after 3 years. He thinks it's unfair and is owed something. He's a perfect example of what's wrong with all of this.
