Friday, October 03, 2003
Schadenfreude is a wonderful feeling...
...Even if it's at the expense of The Economist, a publication I enjoy reading more than most. I have never managed to understand their blind support for Republicans, no matter what they did, especially since Economist readers don't exactly put down the magazine and then turn on the radio to listen to Rush Limbaugh. First, they endorsed Bush over Gore, which anyone with a brain could have seen was a bad idea. More importantly, the Economist said the tax-cuts were a bad idea (in more that one story) and even suggested that Team Bush stop using the terrorism-Saddam angle to justify the war in Iraq. Nevertheless, they found it very difficult to really step out and criticise the administration, a head-in-the-sand attitude that goes far beyond the charming conservative bias I referred to in another post. So, I have to admit some amount of glee in reading Buttonwood this week. Buttonwood goes after Team Bush on its weak dollar policy.
Underlying some of this column’s cheer these few weeks past has been an assumption that President George Bush and his administration were not as stupid, short-sighted, parochial and economically illiterate as they sometimes appear. Buttonwood now realises that this was a mistake and retracts this view as hopelessly optimistic and naive. Over the past couple of weeks, the risks to the world economy and financial markets everywhere have risen as the full force of their economic myopia has visited itself on the world stage.
It's funny how Buttonwood chose this week (of all weeks) to attack Team B on its weak dollar policy, when there are about 10 other embarassing stories it could write about. However, given their strong conservative bias, I am going to cut them some slack and wait another couple of weeks for them to catch up :)
Underlying some of this column’s cheer these few weeks past has been an assumption that President George Bush and his administration were not as stupid, short-sighted, parochial and economically illiterate as they sometimes appear. Buttonwood now realises that this was a mistake and retracts this view as hopelessly optimistic and naive. Over the past couple of weeks, the risks to the world economy and financial markets everywhere have risen as the full force of their economic myopia has visited itself on the world stage.
It's funny how Buttonwood chose this week (of all weeks) to attack Team B on its weak dollar policy, when there are about 10 other embarassing stories it could write about. However, given their strong conservative bias, I am going to cut them some slack and wait another couple of weeks for them to catch up :)
