Krugman is getting close to the edge

[Sekhmets Daughter]

108. The internet bubble did more than

deaden the economy. It heralded the current " secular bear market" we are now enduring. This market began in 2000 and investors are expecting the third correction/plunge to take place sometime in 2013. Usually the middle market decline (2008) in a secular bear market is the hardest, but there is no guarantee that the one in 2013 won't be as bad, if not worse.

Bush's tax cuts did not prevent a collapse. That was accomplished by the Alan Greenspan dropping interest rates (too low for too long) to create the credit bubble of which the housing bubble was a component. As I read the economic news, I am becoming persuaded that the best thing that could happen to the Democrats would be a Republican victory in the fall....The mess they will inherit and exacerbate will be so bad the GOP could end up back in the wilderness it endured between 1954 and 1994.

In 1988 Reagan signed Executive Order 12631 to create the President's Working Group on Financial Markets" aka The Plunge Protection Team.