The disastrous reign of the Bush administration

Have you ever had one of those AAARRGH! moments? I had one a couple of days ago when I opened the Potomac News and read about how President George W. Bush had finally decided that perhaps
we needed to strengthen the American dollar.

For seven and a half years, the president’s economic policies have been, at best, laissez-faire. He actually believed that by doing nothing (not letting the government interfere) there would be
unprecedented economic growth. Instead, just the opposite has happened.

The dollar is at an all-time low, the budget deficit and the national debt are higher than they have ever been (including World War II), the jobless rate stands at 5.5 percent. As a result of the weak dollar,
the price of a barrel of oil is soaring, the average price of a gallon of gasoline is now over $4.05 a gallon, and people have lost untold millions in investments. According to the Department of Agriculture,
grocery prices are rising at rates not seen since 1990. On the wholesale market, the country’s biggest commodity crops — corn, wheat, and soybeans — are selling at record highs; wheat prices are up
nearly 50 percent since the first of the year. Housing foreclosures are astronomical — Prince William County has the highest foreclosure rate in Virginia and is swimming in empty houses.

But in the eleventh hour of his administration, President Bush is mulling over the idea of doing something to strengthen the dollar. For decades the American dollar was the strongest currency in the
world. Despite its weakness, much of the world’s trading is still done in American dollars. That’s the problem — it takes more weak dollars to buy what the pre-Bush dollars could buy. It’s good for
American exports but it is devastating for the things we import. While I am no economics expert, I believe that we may be one of the few nations in the world that does not use some form of currency
control. But that is what George Bush has done — he has allowed the dollar to flap in the breeze and we have paid the price for his economic ignorance.

Bush continues to search for a way to leave his mark in history. He needn’t worry — he has. Except that it is a negative mark, almost the worst in the history of this nation.

GEORGE HARRIS

Manassas