Bubble-Riding Politicians

By Chris Rossini

Central Bankers are the source of inflation and the wild boom/bust cycles that we experience. Politicians are like surfers. Some ride the bubbles, while others ride the busts.

It's always entertaining when a politician that rides the artificial bubble looks to take credit for it, as if it was their genius mind that created it. They steered the big bureaucratic monster just the right way. Of course, that's not true at all. It is the central bank that creates the fantasy that must ultimately turn into an economic nightmare.


Unfortunately, we have two bubble surfers who are running for President in 2016. The first is Hillary Clinton who spins the following tale:

“I hope that at the end of my two terms as president, I will have overseen an even bigger peacetime expansion of the economy than my husband did,” Clinton said, according to Time.

“He had the biggest peacetime expansion in our history.”

Of course, the bubble that ended with the burst of the stock market in 2000 began in the early 1980's. It was created by "The Maestro" Chairman of The Fed, Alan Greenspan. The Clintons were merely surfers towards the end of the boom.

The other bubble surfer that is vying for the Crown is Jeb Bush:

Bush is touting his economic record as governor as one of the strongest aspects of his resume in his pursuit of the White House. He says frequently (and correctly) that the Florida economy created 1.3 million jobs while he was governor, and grew by more than 4% per year. And he pledges to replicate that performance for the nation as a whole if elected president. “There is not a reason in the world why we cannot grow at a rate of 4% a year,” he said when announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination.

Do you know when Jeb Bush hopped off as Governor?

2007.

This practice of surfing the boom, and taking credit for it, is not new. Here's a quote from Thomas Jefferson back in 1797:

“The President [Washington] is fortunate to get off just as the [bank and paper] bubble is bursting, leaving others to hold the bag. Yet, as his departure will mark the moment when the difficulties begin to work, you will see that they will be ascribed to the new administration, and that he will have his usual good fortune of reaping credit from the good acts of others, and leaving to them that of his errors.”

The problem isn't the slimy politicians. They're opportunists, and there's no changing that.

The source of the problem is the central bank, and that can be changed.

End The Fed.

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Chris Rossini is author of Set Money Free: What Every American Needs To Know About The Federal Reserve. Follow @chrisrossini on Twitter.