Forbes magazine’s Steve Forbes says President George W. Bush’s “biggest mistake domestically” was failing to rein in the Federal Reserve–a failure that triggered the financial crisis.
The wealthy publisher and two-time presidential candidate, in Dallas yesterday to address a dinner for financial-services firm Northwestern Mutual, was asked whether he agreed with critics like Gov. Rick Perry, who recently called Bush a big-government “overspender.”
Bush “was a piker compared to his successor, but he did demoralize the [Republican] party by not putting a firm foot on the brake,” Forbes said. “He’ll justify it … I’m sure by saying we had a war, so I gotta keep the home front happy.
“But I do give him credit for changing strategy in Iraq, which a lot in the Pentagon did not want to do,” Forbes continued. “I guess my biggest regret is he didn’t do the same thing with Treasury and the Federal Reserve. I think his biggest mistake domestically –which he didn’t commit, but he allowed it to happen–was the weak dollar.
“We would not have had a housing bubble if the Fed hadn’t printed so much money, provided so much liquidity–the juice wouldn’t have been there for it. None of his Treasury secretaries called the Fed on that, which they have the right to do.
“He did get it right on Fannie and Freddie,” Forbes said. “But on things like mark-to-market [accounting]– very mundane, but it devastated banks, and he didn’t step in on that one [either]. So I only wish he’d done to the Treasury what he did to the Pentagon …”
