Budget Impact Quotes
The Clinton budget was a very unusual one. He and Treasury Sectary Robert Rubin determined that the large deficit built up in the previous administrations and the high interest rate were competing with the private sector for investment capital. Therefore the budget raised taxes and took other steps to reduce the largest deficit then in American History. Virtually all of the Republicans saw disaster for the economy with this budget and even some of the fiscal conservatives from Clinton’s own party were opposed. Boren, normally a wise and sound Senator, had bought into the Republican ideology and mantra that raising taxes will slow the economy. The budget passed by a single vote in the House, and that started the largest economic growth period in American History. The economy became so strong that Clinton was able to produce a balanced budget, eliminate the Reagan deficit, and produce more new jobs than any administration in American history. The prediction that the budget would cause the country to fail was, not only wrong, but the budget caused the nation to succeed, beyond what any thought possible. See {626774} for Clinton’s argument for the budget.
He told the government that the bank was 7 billion Euros short, and after much soul searching, the Irish government agreed to assume the debts of the bank lest all the depositors would only get a small fraction of their deposits back. However, the real deficit that the Irish government had to cover was many times the 7 billion. This led to the complete collapse of the Irish economy. Bowe and the other bank officials maintained that they thought the deficit was only 7 billion when they told that to the government. Four years later, confidential audio tapes of some telephone conversations between Bowe and other bank officials turned up and it was clear that Bowe had picked the 7 billion number out of thin air. It was a number that Bowe thought would be large enough that the Government would have to bail the bank out, but not so large that the government officials might conclude that the bailout cost was too high and it would be better to let the bank fail. By 2013 neither Bowe or any of the other Anglo Irish Bank officials had gone to jail or even been indicted. But millions of Irish citizens had their personal and business economies destroyed. See {635438} for a reaction to the exposure of the meeting.
