Memo to Hillary: Do Not Put Bill in Charge of the Economy [View all]

[NWCorona]

"Most Americans don't want to go back to the 1990s. And here's why they're right about that

During a campaign stop in Kentucky on May 15, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said her husband, Bill, would be in charge of “economic revitalization” were she to win the election.


This is a terrible idea and, possibly, the most tone-deaf suggestion Clinton has made during the current campaign.

Bill Clinton’s economic legacy is not a net positive to Hillary politically. Sure, economic growth was relatively strong in the 1990s. But what kind of growth was it? I’d argue it was growth of the short-term, saccharine variety, fueled by a brief tech productivity boom (now ended) and a stock-market bubble which corrected much of the asset wealth created during that period. This period was also the point at which wages began flattening not just for poor Americans but for nearly everybody. The high-tide of the late-1990s did lift a lot of boats, but plenty of wreckage was left in its wake as soon as it was sucked back to sea.

That’s in part because many on President Clinton’s team bought into notions of trickle-down economics Republicans before them had. The history of deregulation and economic policy shifts under his tenure contributed in many ways to some of the problems that we face in the financial markets today. (For more on these, read TIME’s current cover story on saving capitalism, adapted from my book, Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business.)

Many now acknowledge that derivatives deregulation under Clinton was, in retrospect, unwise. But a less well understood legacy of his economic policy is the pressure for companies to make short- rather than long-term decisions."

http://amp.timeinc.net/time/4337818/hillary-clinton-bill-economy/?source=dam

Hillary is already walking this idea back.