Im not concerned who hates which president, but in general I think its unhealthy for the electorate as a whole, that so many people put all the blame or all the praise on one guy. They all have a huge numbers of people working in the white house, in the departments and many of them make policy that work against the administration. You have left over democrats working for republicans and visa versa. Valery Plame and Joe Wilson were two such people. Both are democrats. Why pick them?

I read an article today, that has two senior people in transportation submitting plans, one is looking for alternative means of funding highway infrastructure and another one is in favor of another approach. The last time the federal gas tax was raised was 1993. They all have their own agenda.

More importantly is how the federal budget is put together. They have a "current budget baseline" as opposed to a zero budget baseline. Currently, federal expenditures automatically increase 10% every year. So when you hear about your favorite program being cut, its being cut from a 10% increase. Thats one of the reasons that these old programs never get disolved.

The president doesnt spend money. Only the congress can appropriate funds in the budget. During RR the House Majority leader announced the Presidents budget was dead on arrival, almost every year.

According to Michael Reagan, Reagan made a deal with the house in 86 or so, when they did have a tax increase. The deal was for every dollar in new taxes, the congress would CUT 2 dollars in spending. The cuts never came.

Remember the S and L crisis? Someone convince Bush 41 to raise taxes to bail out the s and L. Then they beat him over the head with something they passed in congress to do.

The president doesnt control the Fed. In 92 up to the election, Chairman Greenspan held interest rates up even though everyone joked in the newspapers about him seeing inflation snakes everywhere he went. By the time the election was held, the economy actually had 3-4 % growth in the third qtr. of 92. That and Perot cost him the election.

The Fed chairman Bernanke was late coming to the rescue of the large banks and reducing interest rates. The banks of course had so much bad paper that they all wrote, they didnt trust each other and Libor rates, which is the rate banks charge each other for short term loans has been pretty high.

Now that energy and commodity inflation is hitting consumers, this fed chairman and the fed res board is considering interest rate hikes. Normally the fed hikes rates to quell inflation, but there is no guarantee that energy inflation is going to be stopped with that kind of policy. In addition, the Sub prime crisis, is not over. More mortgages will go into default and although there is help, homeowners are not reaching out for help. We still have a glut of homes in a number of states and increased interest rates will kill a lot of sales. (All of which has little to do with the whitehouse) Subprime was the creation of bankers and traders to the extent some mortgages were sold so many times, its difficult to know who owns your mortgage. The regulators did not police the banking institutions and the rating agencies like Moodies were not paying attention, and a lot of ratings were to high. The mortgage insurers were a case in point. Bear Stearns is no longer in business. The stock was 170 dollars per share last year and JP Morgan came in and scooped it up for 2 dollars per share and in a week or so the shares came up to about 10 bucks.

Countrywide Mortgage, the largest in the nation was bought by Bank of American and now they are sweating the paper losses in CWM portfolio.

Washington Mutual screwed up bad and all of these banks have laid off a lot of people. Foreign countries have bought some of these loser securities.

Citibank and others were cuting up to 19,000 employees at a whack.

Remember JUNK BONDS? Michael Milkin. The S and L crisis, the sub prime loan crisis are all bank and trader type of creations and they cause a lot of trouble when the bubble breaks.

None of these guys call the white house and get the ok to do this crap.

All of these institutions answer to congress. We all remembers how well congressman ran their own bank.

Congress is no different than the FW Commission. If you dont write, you dont exist. Actually you do exist. You're on the menu.