A Gamblers Debt

In an editorial, Nixon, Bush, Palin, in the Opinion section of The New York Times, the author Roger Cohen discusses our current economic and market status, while also addressing the cost left by the Bush Administrations mistakes. Roger Cohen, the International Herald Tribune's first editor-at-large in 2006, and former foreign editor for the New York Times begins his editorial with a quote of former president Richard Nixon made in 1970, “Frankly, if I had any money, I’d be buying stocks right now.” At this quote Cohen comments a plea that Bush will not follow Nixon’s example believing the market would tank if Bush made such a remark. Cohen begins to discuss the gambles the current administration made and the price to be paid. He begins with the gamble of going to war with Iraq, which cost an estimated 700 billion dollars (much like the amount selected for the bailout plan). Around the same time Bush according to Cohen; “opted to allow an opaque derivatives market to grow into the trillions without supervision, regulation or information”, the result of which was markets ability of turning “capitalism into a pyramid scheme for trading worthless paper.” Now, do to these mistakes we have been forced into financial alertness. Cohen states that already banks in Europe of failing, soon after maybe even the dollar. Will we be forced to the gold standard again? “We are getting closer to a tipping-point,” a comment from Benn Steil, an economist, satisfies the verdict that our economy may plummet. According to Benn Steil this economic down fall is causing people to ask, “Can we really trust the dollar as a store of value?” With the financial stability who knows. A lesson learned and it only took 8 years, according to Roger Cohen, “when power is a passport to gamble, people can end up seriously broke or seriously dead.”

I am in full agreement with Roger it is one thing to run a country it is another to gamble its stability. War was an unnecessary tactic and could have been avoided, if Bush had the competence and was not so gun-ho we would not being in the financial situation we are in today. It’s as Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “How far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?” Question comes to mind how much further will we go?