Funny how history repeats itself

"It's the economy, Stupid."

That's the phrase that accompanied Bill Clinton's entry into the White House for his first term as President. The democrat Clinton was president after a republican, George Bush the elder. The U.S. economy was in decline. Now we have another democrat president succeeding a republican president, George Bush junior. Coincidence? Of course. But what shouldn't be coincidence is the dismal state of the economy. Have we learned nothing since then?

Think back to the 1980s for a moment. This was the era of "The Me generation," Remember the movie, "Wall Street," where one of the characters states that Greed is good? Well, the people who were in college then, or starting off in their careers must have taken those sentiments to heart, because a generation later, they are the people running the economy. We have people like Bernie Madoff, who apparently thinks that it's acceptable to defraud people of their retirement savings. But that isn't the entire story. Madoff promised greater returns on investment than other companies. So, many people simply followed their greed for more money and signed over their cash to him. Perhaps if those investors had stopped to wonder why Madoff could offer higher percentages than other institutions, they may have been more cautious about investing with him, or they may have diversified their savings. But no, most of these investors dumped huge sums into Madoff's hands because they allowed greed, not fiscal responsibility, to guide them.

And now we hear that two cabinet nominees have failed to pay all their taxes. I give both these people the benefit of the doubt that they are honorable men who did not deliberately try to avoid paying their taxes. But it begs the question: If you cannot manage your own financial affairs properly, how can We the People expect you to manage your government responsibilities?

But this is all water under the bridge at this point. The real issue now is whether We the People have confidence in the politicians in Washington D.C. to understand the underlying problems in the economy that got all of us into this mess, and then do the right things to fix the problem. This will likely require many of these politicians to make some hard decisions about whether they put their own interests before those of the nation , or not.